where is all the black people? kingdom come deliverance

[abulafia]

oh my, what interesting times we are living in.
i stumbled upon this game cause i like robin hood since i was a child and played games like defender of the crown on c64.
the thread title is taken from plinkett´s star wars review.

but let´s sum this up. warhorse entertainment kickstarted a sandbox openworld medieval setting game located in a remote region of bohemia.
to everyone not well versed in middle eastern european history and geography, it is a location triangled between bohemia (think prague, heard of that city? ), poland and germany.
it is placed in the year 1400, aka the high medievial times, before the renaissance kicked in and brought major changes to societies.
the game follows the adventures of a low born male who operates within a gaming world of 16 square kilometeres.

so why the fuzz?
obviously, the games lead designer is a shady figure. on a gamescon presentation, he wore a t-shirt shirt of scandinavian black metal band burzum.
this irked many observers as an odd statement. this was futher fueled by the fact, that said lead designer, daniel vavra, supported something called "gamergate".
i have not researched this so far, but it appears vavra is an extreme liberalist who supports alt-right theories and supports breitbart.
furthermore vavra made insensitive posts about why there are no PoC in the game and why you can´t play as a woman.

as far as i have researched, this sparked the controversy.
race in fiction has been subject of many recent contorversies in recent years. idris elba as heimdall in the thor movies for example.

i must admit that i have been unaware of the issue about PoC depiction in medeival based fiction.
i have been thinking alot about the depiction of jews nevertheless, starting from the first time i read "ivanhoe" by sir walter scott.
but i never thought of them as PoC in a young age(thx to liz taylor). it is a very interesting subject though.
there is a whole community dedicated to this
https://www.publicmedievalist.com/uncovering-african/

so, PoC in medieval times. what is that anyways?
by the time of the games´s setting, you have remnants of the mongols sitting at the black sea. in spain the reqonqista ended arround that time, so it was a melting pot, as was konstantinopel.
there were some black, christian kingdoms which are likely to have had diplomatic relations with east rome. 200 years earlier, the emporer of the holy roman empire was well known to have close contacts to the oriental world.
so i´d conclude, that contact to "exotic" representatives was highly restricted to the ruleing body and to a lesser degree to dedicated traders.
and let´s not forget that muslims were into slave trade for another 500 years from this point in time.

i think kevin costner´s "prince of thieves" first brought this idea into modern popculture with having morgan freeman as his muslim companion.
so to me it is very plausibel, that "europeans" where aware of different coloured people.
on the other hand, there is the medival poet wolfram von eschenbach, that wrote about parzifal.
within this work, is a mention of a character, that is said to have a black mother. eschenbach envisions him like a zebra, which doesn´t strike me like this educated poet has an understanding of black people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_von_Eschenbach

so in regards to the game in question, i think it is fair to say, that courts and trading nodes have been in contact with PoC, but not the remote regions of europe.

with the upcoming release of black panther, i guess this is a valid issue. i always seek to be educated on aspects i am not aware of.
but i must also state, that i wonder why islamic slave traders are mostly taken out of the black/white equation. i don´t want to negate anything by mentioning this, but to create a more diverse understanding of the past centuries

[ChildOfTheAtom]

I like games that let you edit the start character. Only way I get a black guy most of the time in games

[Triniking1234]

Where are all the black people?

They're in real life.

[Carabas]

Well, that sucks.
I was rather looking forward to this but no way am I giving my money to a bunch of Gamergaters who have gone on to even worse things.

Where are all the black people?

They're in real life.

[abulafia]

Well, that sucks.
I was rather looking forward to this but no way am I giving my money to a bunch of Gamergaters who have gone on to even worse things.

well i have not broken the staff over the game yet. atm i am scanning the webz if there is indication that vavra´s political views have impact on the game, beyond descions that could be explained as storytelling choices.
after all, the production of a game is a huge team effort.
nevertheless, becoming aware of this, was a huge disappointment.
game had been a sure purchase and dropped to maybe someday, look more into the issue

[Derek Metaltron]

Honestly, people moaning about any game which is trying to anything interesting these days if there's even a whisper of Anti-SJW material. Can we please try and separate games from their creators and not effectively punish gamers for it who might be looking forwards to games like this or say Detroit: Become Human and see it ripped apart? I think we can safely say everyone is an ass in some way or another.

[Carabas]

Honestly, people moaning about any game which is trying to anything interesting these days if there's even a whisper of Anti-SJW material. Can we please try and separate games from their creators and not effectively punish gamers for it who might be looking forwards to games like this or say Detroit: Become Human and see it ripped apart? I think we can safely say everyone is an ass in some way or another.

I'm afraid to ask but what is up with Become Human?

[Derek Metaltron]

I'm afraid to ask but what is up with Become Human?

https://www.theguardian.com/games/20...ng-environment

[moon-man]

This game is so glitchy right now unfortunately. I enjoy it but the developers definitely need to release some new updates soon. VR would be very fun with this too..