Kingdom Come: Deliverance Kickstarter

[Mamoulian War]

Keyword in my post is "Game" not "Medieval". Please read again and don't put to my mouth words, which I did not said.

 

In other words, saying that someone is bigot, because he does not think, that having woman in historical medieval game is good idea, is as farfetched as saying that Quentin Tarantino is a racist, because how he depicted black people in Django Unchained...

Edited January 30, 2014 by Mamoulian War

[IndiraLightfoot]

Keyword in my post is "Game" not "Medieval". Please read again and don't put to my mouth words, which I did not said.

Well, nobody said that either, that we want equality in that medieval game setting. We just want another RPG option. And while we're speaking of games: You wouldn't ban women characters from other CRPGs too, would you?

[Malcador]

Well you'd want both in the end, the option to choose and for the character to be equal.  You'd be kicking up a fuss if the female option meant a weaker character or a harder time of things, no ?

[Bryy]

Keyword in my post is "Game" not "Medieval". Please read again and don't put to my mouth words, which I did not said.

 

In other words, saying that someone is bigot, because he does not think, that having woman in historical medieval game is good idea, is as farfetched as saying that Quentin Tarantino is a racist, because how he depicted black people in Django Unchained...

I never said any of those things. Nobody did.

[Malcador]

Think he meant the jabs at Chilloutman, caves and all, etc.

[HoonDing]

Main character is a poor but naturally gifted yokel who by circumstance starts to trek around, kicks everyone's ass wherever he goes and eventually gains the attention of the high nobility and becomes a knight.

 

It's a copy paste of Flemish book "John the Fearless" which is set in 15th century Duchy of Burgundy.

 

In the end, it's nothing but wish fulfillment and so far removed from reality that main character might as well be female.

[Endrosz]

(This is offtopic in this topic, but it's interesting re: sexism vs. middle ages.)

 

This debate reminds of a "****storm in a nightpot" thing that happened in a small but very unique and interesting MMO, A Tale In the Desert (ATITD).

 

Main site: http://www.atitd.com/

Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_in_the_Desert

 

So this a very sandbox type game, which is enhanced by being cut into "Tellings" which end in real-time at a given time. During a certain Telling, players can achieve/build stuff that is basically Civ's wonders -- or more precisely, they try to do so. The players make their own laws (and the devs code them!). The devs throw in custom, non-repeating events from time to time, which is the closest thing to having the equivalent of a Game Master in an MMO.

 

Egypt was chosen specifically because based on what we pieced together via archeology etc., they offered the most power/freedom to women out of the ancient cultures. There is ample evidence that women were allowed to become doctors and teachers, among others. Not in every age of Egypt, not under every pharaoh, but certainly a lot more power and respect than any other ancient culture. This choice was made to accommodate female player characters (who are not necessarily played by real-life women, mind you) with at least some degree of verisimilitude.

 

One of the above mentioned custom, dev-placed events was that a trader arrived from Persia, who sold some important crafting materials very cheaply. Since crafting is very central to this game, these cheap materials were much sought after. And now, the controversy: The trader came from a culture, where women where treated as property, and refused to sell his wares to female characters. Also, when female characters came up to him, he offered to buy them as slaves and treated them with contempt, throwing slurs at them, etc. This happened in-game, it was a roleplaying thing.

 

There was a huge "sexiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiism" uproar over this -- huge considering how unknown game was (and is). Slashdot reported it, for example, also Wired. A sample:

 

A Tale in the desert causes controversy with female players

 

My favorite post on the subject is by Richard Bartle, who created the first MUD in the '70s -- he's considered the granddaddy of the MMO genre. he wrote this on Terra Nova, which is a collective blog about MMOs:

 

Terra Nova: A Riot

 

A piece of what he wrote:

 

 

The players who objected to the sexism were doing so for the same reason that the "rape in cyberspace" people objected to MrBungle's actions: it brought shocking reality into the virtual.

Virtual worlds feature much worse things than sexism, but these are advertised up-front. A virtual world with sexism designed-in would (or should) be no more controversial than one with murder designed-in. People who don't like sexism don't have to play.

The problem comes when these things aren't advertised up-front. Reality impinges on virtual worlds all the time, but sometimes it comes in such a large dose that it shocks some or all players out of the virtual and into the real. This is what happened here, for whatever reason. For those affected, it ceases to be a "game"; for everyone else, the magic circle holds and the attack from reality is beaten off.

 

Applying his logic Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the developers are completely up-front about telling you that what they do (a blacksmith boy, male protagonist) and why (it fits with the historical setting better, and it costs a lot less, since doing a female story would mean a lot more than just creating another 3D model). If you don't like it, don't pledge/withdraw you pledge.

[Bryy]

Applying his logic Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the developers are completely up-front about telling you that what they do (a blacksmith boy, male protagonist) and why (it fits with the historical setting better, and it costs a lot less, since doing a female story would mean a lot more than just creating another 3D model). If you don't like it, don't pledge/withdraw you pledge.

All this is moot because the devs are going to add in a female main character as a stretch goal.

 

So you can't make the claim that this isn't something they want to do.

[Zoraptor]

The simple historical fact is that women were treated differently than men in the medieval period, and very significantly so. If you're going for an accurate representation of those times then such things have to be taken into account. Else you'll have the catholic church and everyone else wanting to be portrayed a particular, ahistoric, way- after all, the RCC stopped their witch and heretic burning ways long before you regularly had overt women in armies. If you have a woman protagonist and it is a realistic depiction then you either have someone pretending to be a man or being asterisked over all the time for being a woman- accused of being a witch, possessed, a devil, forcibly married off etc. Those are the things that happened historically. Society was deeply sexist then, as well as being deeply a whole lot of other unpleasant things. So long as they don't decide to airbrush selectively the realism argument is all the argument needed.

 

(Yes, as virumor notes, having a basic yokel achieve greatness and power isn't exactly the most realistic approach either. But without that you don't really have a game...)

[Nonek]

There were ocassional cases of such an individual however, William Marshall springs to mind, the greatest Knight in Christendom supposedly.

[Humanoid]

I find it interesting that debates like these tend to immediately turn to discussions about soldiers and command and other military-related things. The game description tells you straight up you can be a villainous thief (or hell, villainous bard - not sure how that works, be a rock 'n' roll star?). And that's almost certainly what I'll be playing regardless of what gender options are made available in the final product.

 

If it's a good game, then playing it this way ought to be a completely different experience to those players who choose to have their characters enlist in the army. About as big, if not moreso, than, oh, being a woman. In either case it's making more-or-less a whole second game in the same shell.

 

I might find myself supporting an inverse stretch goal here. At 1 million, remove the feature to be anything but one 'class', and tell a nice focused, character-driven story like The Witcher. I'm somewhat afraid the supposed choice of path otherwise will merely be showing different icons on your hotbar, and that as a thief they'll still be expecting you to, in the words of their blurb, "lead the charge in enormous, open field battles and sieges." Now *that* would be a blow against realism.

[Bryy]

Hell, I was on the fence about if I could pledge to any new KS this month, let alone this one.

 

But because of the female stretch goal, I just may.

 

That's not white knighting, that's just being fair.

[Malcador]

So you don't gamble on projects with male only protagonists ?

 

If they can allow me to be an unscrupulous banker, I'm in.

[alanschu]

I tend to believe that there is value in accurate depictions of bygone or now rejected political norms.

The problem comes with, as far I'm concerned, how accurate our depictions of history actually are.

 

 

Zoraptor made an interesting post earlier, although he met at it with a more cautious perspective, with respect to "women in the time were likely dressed as men." I am curious if, given the circumstances, if "you're a woman but you spend a fair bit of time needing to pretend to be a man" would be sufficient.

 

It'd mitigate the concerns that Keyrock put forth, regarding divergent content. Must the content be significantly different? Or is it a convenient because some people have their impression on how the more minute details of history and anything that doesn't fall in line with those beliefs puts people on the defensive.

 

I mean, for example, I would suspect that a lot of people would assume that women in medieval Islam were at best treated no better than a lot of Muslim states now, and possibly even worse. Though according to Labour in the Medieval Islamic World denotes that women were frequently in what we consider masculine jobs (construction, guild presidents), and were the first to actually have women physicians. (12th Century, although also surgeons by the 15th century) I think there's also a belief that women equality has tended to monotonically increase with time, when the Industrial Revolution saw women's rights increasingly marginalized.

 

No, I'm not saying women in the 10th-15th Century were seen as equals to men, but I wouldn't be surprised if assumptions and biases predispose many of us to overestimate (I know I used to be a much more hardliner on this topic as well).

Edited January 31, 2014 by alanschu

[Wrath of Dagon]

Why can't you play as Black or Chinese? There were plenty of examples in history of Blacks and Chinese in Medieval Europe. Clearly not having an option to play them is racist.

[alanschu]

If we're looking it from a historic perspective, your concern could actually be valid (although I'll admit I am ignorant to the prevalence of Chinese people in Europe, and would need to do some research).

 

Though I have a feeling that that may not actually be the intention of your post. If you'd like, we could evolve this discussion into a breakdown of the value and contributions of women in medieval times and contrast them with minorities like a black or Chinese person, with the baseline of typical white males to be compared against.

Edited January 31, 2014 by alanschu

[pmp10]

Isn't it funny how gender issues completely overshadow any other problems associated with the time period?

Any realistic depiction of a medieval man or woman must come with a set of beliefs and behaviors that modern audience will find repulsive.

That's why the end result of historical realism in games is usually something akin to Assassins Creed.

[BruceVC]

Guys I have a good idea, why don't they make the game with a female only protagonist who can be a bard or outlaw, or any other historically accurate profession? Then they make a stretch goal of 2-3 million to allow us to play as a male. This way we can see if the community wants proper gender representation. Now before you say " that won't work" think about all the social issues like discrimination that the female character will face apart from all the trials and tribulations that would be normal in a medieval setting

 

Who is with me !!!!

[BruceVC]

Isn't it funny how gender issues completely overshadow any other problems associated with the time period?

Any realistic depiction of a medieval man or woman must come with a set of beliefs and behaviors that modern audience will find repulsive.

That's why the end result of historical realism in games is usually something akin to Assassins Creed.

 

Its not really that funny because its a game end of the day not a medieval simulator so the Developers are allowed to use artistic license in creating characters that people like to play

[Malcador]

Guys I have a good idea, why don't they make the game with a female only protagonist who can be a bard or outlaw, or any other historically accurate profession? Then they make a stretch goal of 2-3 million to allow us to play as a male. This way we can see if the community wants proper gender representation. Now before you say " that won't work" think about all the social issues like discrimination that the female character will face apart from all the trials and tribulations that would be normal in a medieval setting

 

Who is with me !!!!

 

Problem with a stretch goal is that it's not necessarily voting for an idea.  The money from some one swept away with zeal over a female only protagonist will count as much as some one that wants a male protagonist for equality reasons.  Besides, being female only will get cash thrown at it pretty well, I'd imagine, as it can play the angle of against the grain and appeal to your kind of socially minded people - so it'd hit that stretch goal easy

[Bryy]

Why can't you play as Black or Chinese? There were plenty of examples in history of Blacks and Chinese in Medieval Europe. Clearly not having an option to play them is racist.

We don't know anything about character creation yet.

 

Your argument is transparent.

[BruceVC]

The problem with allowing gender choice in a historically accurate period piece of a game is all the extra development that this would entail.  . 

 

Normally that would be a valid point accept for the fact that with stretch goals allowing the budget to reach double the original tier to allow some form of female representation I don't think that is applicable. In other words they have effectively raised enough money to create 2 games based on the original target, I fail to see how they can't incorporate a decent female footprint  if the issue is just about resourcing?

[Bryy]

So you don't gamble on projects with male only protagonists ?

 

That's entirely not what I said.

 

If a game has a stretch goal for, say, other platforms, I'll contribute more.

[BruceVC]

So you don't gamble on projects with male only protagonists ?

 

If they can allow me to be an unscrupulous banker, I'm in.

 

Funny enough Malc but I've supported numerous KS that are your typical party based RPG where there are male and female characters

 

But in most cases I won't support a KS that doesn't have some sort of female representation or is dismissive of social issues, for example a game that has homophobia or racist undertones.

 

The good news is these games nowadays are few and far between as most publishing and development companies are aware of what many people expect or don't think is applicable. You probably think this is an extreme view but that's my stance on what games I'm prepared to support. Of course there are games where my view isn't relevant like RTS

Edited January 31, 2014 by BruceVC

[Humanoid]

 

So you don't gamble on projects with male only protagonists ?

 

That's entirely not what I said.

 

If a game has a stretch goal for, say, other platforms, I'll contribute more.

 

The unfortunate implication is that a developer like this, who's promised cross-platform support from the start, might end up with less money because they included it by default instead of making it a stretch goal.

 

Maybe sometime a developer needs to be cynical and not disclose that information on the initial pitch perhaps.