I find it quite insulting that he considers the caucasions to be "well dressed" yet judges the dress of the people of color as primitive. That's your assessment, Hoshi, and I find it biased and insulting.

I would like to point out that the white woman appears to be wearing patchwork clothing, sewn together with thick string. Her outfit's kind of jester-esque... She looks like she's wearing rags! I don't see that as "refined upper class". In fact, the black man looks very well dressed to me, with well made pants and large pieces of metal jewelry all over. The class levels seem well mixed here, to me.

I'm with Susanne here-- the darker male seems much more "citified" & the lighter female seems like she's in motley-- rags! I'll grant you that the "city" the darker male evokes for me is a "fantasy Baghdad" or "Babylon" rather than a "fantasy London" or "Paris" but that is another issue-- how fictional race & real race are tied together.

The points about the female/male hand poses is absolutely true, though.

One thing that immediately jumped out at me is the amount of clothing on the white musicians vs the poc musicians. It was only after looking at the picture for a while that I noticed both poc characters appear to be barefoot.
sigh

and this,

If you follow the players’ logic, that means it’s more believable to have talking cats than to have a person of color dressed nicely in a city. That’s just messed up.

word.

I agree with Duran - the light-skinned female sure doesn't look "upper class" to me. So many of you people scream stereotype and bigotry where it just doesn't exist.

Funny thing is, if you actually look up pictures from the Quattrocento, you'll be more likely to see Black people dressed quite sumptuously than in tribal costume. See also Veronese's Marriage at Cana for some POC people in magnificent attire.

I think that the best example of a video game that treats every race exactly the same would be The Elder Scrolls. Even the beast races (lizard, and cat) have their personal quirks and can be found dressed in everything from animal skins to elegant court attire and everyone has varying positions of power all over the place. (Especially in ES4:Oblivion)

Except that the cat race (can't remember the name at the moment) speaks in a peculiar way and has an unusual predilection for "moon sugar" (cocaine).

I wouldn't say that the White characters are more "well-dressed" or that their clothing is more "refined" than the Characters of Color. However, there are some notable contrasts:

-Both White characters are wearing shoes while both CoC are barefoot.
-The 2 CoC show the most skin, the White female shows less, and the White male shows the least.
-The White female is lighter-skinned than the White male. The female CoC is lighter-skinned than the male CoC.
-The females have dancing poses, the males have aggressive poses.

I agree with Susanne - the two PoCs doesn't seem particularly poor to me. Concerning the poses, it's obvious they used the same two base forms to mold their characters, they just flipped them. I wouldn't be surprised if that was their standard model for developing new characters.

About this whole 'you can't have black people in a medieval city' thing: It's a well-known fact that generic fantasy entertainment products rely heavily upon white maleness and common perceptions about medieval Europe. While a lot of things differ and are purely fictional, other categories are extremely fixed. I suspect this relates to which categories we as people in the 21st century use to define our own reality: You can easily introduce talking cats, because they don't markedly clash with anything, really. Whereas, if you put a black man in a city that's supposed to be something like London or Edinburgh, you confront a lot of conceptions about the placement of people socially, geographically and historically. That's why a non-tribal black woman is 'unrealistic' while a giant, flying, mounstrous talking lizard isn't.

"Whereas, if you put a black man in a city that’s supposed to be something like London or Edinburgh, you confront a lot of conceptions about the placement of people socially, geographically and historically."

I was just reading Liza Picard's Elizabeth's London, where she reserves some length to the "Blackamoor" servants that began being carried to London in the late 1500s, in enough number that Elizabeth I freaked out and threatened to deport them. POC were common enough in Elizabethan England (at least in the big cities where noblemen kept their retinues) that the Blackamoor handmaiden was a stock character in theater, and audiences saw nothing weird in Othello being a nobleman in Venice. There's a nice writeup of the history of Black and Asian people in the British isles here.

So yeah, there is really no excuse. It's only prejudice on the writers' part that keeps the fantasy genre mostly lily-white, because their analogous societies certainly weren't.

About this whole ‘you can’t have black people in a medieval city’ thing: It’s a well-known fact that generic fantasy entertainment products rely heavily upon white maleness and common perceptions about medieval Europe.

"Well-known" is one way to describe it; "liable to start flame wars" is another. In particular, there was a huge argument among fantasy publishers, authors, and fans (people of color being dramatically under-represented in the first two categories) that began earlier this year and may have died down by now. See this timeline (of the earliest events) to get some sense of how deeply passionate the fans of color are and how deeply oblivious many of the professionals are.

Sadly, that very much concerns text instead of images. But it may also help put into context some of the resistance to the idea that white people are fully-dressed and people of color are barefoot and dressed in, well, whatever that's supposed to be.

Ah, yeah, Racefail. Metafandom's bookmarks tagged with "race" and "racefail" are a good summary of the hundreds of discussions that have been raging on in the LiveJournalsphere for months.

I'm going on holidays for a couple of weeks now, so I apologize for not being able to follow on this conversation.

Elena: Yeah, but ignorance of history and prejudice aren't the same thing, although it's still worthy of criticism. It's the society of medieval/Renaissance Europe as a whole that's being stereotyped, and persons of color being misrepresented is merely one component of that. I'm not even sure that persons of color necessarily get the short end of the stick in the end when you consider how many misconceptions are floating around to most aspects of that time period.

unfortunately this isn't surprising in the least. video game makers are remarkably tone deaf about issues of diversity. if anyone here plays wow i'm sure they are familiar with the problems there..most of the races in wow correspond to ethnicities (tauren = generically native american, troll = caribbean, dwarf = scottish, orc = african/african american, human = white, night elf = generically asian, etc. etc.). for a long time i couldn't figure out what the goblins were supposed to be...not a playable race, kings of capitalism, excellent merchants, with large noses and sometimes strong new york accents. and then it dawned on me...of course! they're jews!

there are similar gender problems as well. one of the in-game achievements for a recently revamped easter-type holiday involved putting in-game bunny ears on female characters of every race who were at least level 18. a post on a popular wow blog, wowinsider, discussed this issue and several women wow players' feelings of discomfort at having bunny ears put on their characters. you don't even want to know the flame war that erupted in the comments ridiculing the womens' concerns and ridiculing the idea that there might be anything to object to in this event. i suppose it isn't surprising. after all, video game players overall are pretty notorious for enforcing "locker room" attitudes about gender, race, and sexuality.

I agree on almost every point. Except... technically, the white woman is wearing a variation on 'traditional dress' for her culture. Also mine, I will ad. Personally I wouldn't be caught dead in that, but it's traditional in my culture. The white male is less obviously so, partly because male dress hasn't changed THAT much over the centuries, really.

There's a basic mistake here that what is mainstream now came from nowhere. That IS tribal dress that the white woman is wearing. Well, maybe not tribal. But would it be better if she was in lederhosen or something like that?

I have arguments with people at work where they will start to say things like 'in my culture, we have ceremonies to reintroduce a woman who has just given birth to the community'. And cos I'm a smartarse I'll say things like, 'well, in medaevil Europe, there were churching ceremonies, which are the same thing'.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that just cos we're white, we don't have a 'culture' or a tribal past. It may be more past, and most people don't know about it, but it's there.

I really don't want that to overshadow the other excellent points in the post, which I agree with. I just feel that it buys further into the idea that 'white' is 'default' and sort of came from nowhere, was born from nothing, and is what we must be.

I think you may be looking a little too deeply into this one. There are white and black and other races of NPC's in several of the major cities of runescape. These NPCs are also appropriately dressed for their status. Admittedly Runescape is majority white, especially in the major northern cities. Also, there are admittedly a treasure trove of stereotypes, such as the region of Al Kharid, which simply dives into the stereotype of the middle east, right down to the music, camels, and sand. The black people in the rainforest also use sticks of bamboo for money. There's plenty to work with. But as for these four characters, it's not so much black and white as it is man v. woman. These NPC's inhabit the world of RS on their own, meaning that if they were 'real' they would be caring for themselves and depending on their own earnings. This said, the women are notably poorer and more outcast than the men.

The difference in the so called 'affluence' of their dress isn't just that the black man is shirtless. The white woman is wearing rags! The tangible difference in affluence would be between the men and women. Both men are well dressed and regal looking while the women are dressed in their regional version of rags. The black male is obviously able to afford huge gold jewelry, while the woman decorates herself with grass. The white male has enough clothing to cover his entire body from the colder climate of his location, while woman is pale and exposed to the elements.

Perhaps runescape just wants the ladies to get married so that they can dress themselves better. There's your can of worms.

It may just be me, but I just enjoy the game
and try not to dig into every scrap of racism
and/or sexism. Maybe I'm just ignorant.

What a stupid thing this is. LOL. I hate when people try to enforce a sexism or racism into unrelated things. First, what should the female characters? Fat, short, pig-like? Would it be meaningful while male characters look sexy, charismatic and athletic? Tip for you: Answer is no. In the other side, I see no racism here. Do you know what kingdoms they represent? If one kingdom is more mystic, and the other is more royal, these representives are very logic. The inlogical in this scene is to whine about differences about different kingdoms. Obviously these two races represent Indians and Renassaince people. Sorry, but in hot beaches you don't wear heavy clothes like the cold Alpine regions. Less clothes doesn't mean less civilized. So it is really stupid to define "less clothes" as "primitive". You don't become primitive if you dress according to your region. And don't forget every region has different culture. If you don't agree those differences, you become the racist. Less clothes mean less civilized. Lol. What an argue...
BTW, I don't play Runescape, but I play WoW, AOC and many different games even you didn't hear. If you want to force stupid and unrelevant "racism claims" go play WoW and see most "sexist" and "racist" things. Orc shamans wear less clothes than Human warriors. Ooh, that is really racist thing.
If a thing messed up, it is this weird topic.

You guys are idiots -.-

Bye.

For the record i was browsing the internet and i found this picture. I clicked it to look because i like the "black" girls clothes. (i thought they looked cool and i play the game)when i began to read this thread it upset me. I'm sorry but people like Lisa Wade need to GET A LIFE. Its a game for crying out loud. Mainly kids between the age 10-16 play. They don't look at it that way...

well said bonecrusher

Unfortunately stereotypes can and do affect perceptions or unconscious views of what it is 'natural' for women or particular cultures to look or act like, even if it's not intended and even if the readers aren't taking it seriously.

Of Runescape in general: there ARE women in senior positions across the world, there ARE people of colour in the major cities (and every area of the world, including the non-human races), and people of colour in the cities will be dressed just like the white people (one black Elf is flagged as 'the most beautiful elf I ever saw'). Players can also choose different skin colours for their character, and racism by players is discouraged (though rather prevalent).

However, there's some areas which very much play on stereotypes, and the main offenders have already been mentioned: Karamja and al-Kharid. Karamja has a lot of underdressed black people, as well as NPC 'tribesmen' and 'jungle savages' who are aggressive to players. al-Kharid is full of crude stereotypes of Arabs including a 'rug salesman' type, a running joke about everyone from one town being called Ali, and guards who call players 'infidels'. For 'balance', they also have Scandinavian-stereotype "barbarians" (who are insular, carry axes, drink to excess, etc), the gnomes are stereotype English, etc. Most of the stereotypical bits were early additions to the game, and recent updates have been more careful about such things (the renaming of NPC 'Rasool' as 'Rasolo' stands out). Women in all areas tend to be under-dressed relative to men (certain player costumes appear with bare bellies on women but not men, e.g. Dragonhide armour; a few it's the other way, e.g. Verac's); all women are slim and attractive; men also have a standard body-shape which is slim and well-built, but not really 'muscle-man' except for a few exceptional NPCs. The only 'fat' characters are non-humans such as Ogresses and Trolls. Ogresses are walking 'yo momma' jokes, they even flip their stomachs to show them off. There's also a distinct lack of people with disabilities (unless we count peg-legged pirates and a yeti-man), and a virtual veto on any suggestion of gayness in-game, despite many hetero-romantic storylines. A particular gripe: openly discussing one's sexuality falls in the same category of banned acts as homophobic abuse.

WOW incidentally, doesn't do 'direct' racism (black humans are simply humans), but has the same body-shape issues, and also does 'indirect' racism: most of the non-human races are based on stereotypes of ethnic groups - Orcs are African, Trolls are Caribbean (complete with accents and patois), Goblins are Arabic or Jews (complete with the trader role and pointy noses), Tauren are Native Americans (complete with tepees, chiefs, shamans, dream-visions, mesas...)

I haven't played this particular game, but as a woman who plays this sort of game, I want my character to look amazing, wear clothes that I would never wear in the real world (due to uncomfortableness) I don't really play a game and wish to look 'average', it is after all a fantasy game, escapism.

Runescape is being overtly generous by even allowing dark skinned people a place in their game. This “people of color” term you use, is often used to describe niggers in the real world, whereas the dark skinned runescape NPCs resemble Arabs or Indians. Runescape is a fantasy game, and people do not want niggers in their escapades from reality. Goblins and ogres make up for niggers just fine. Newsflash: the “people of color” in the game are dressed the way they are because that is how it is in the real world. Reality beez all rayciss an sheeit. Runescape should have had niggers living in mud huts and their own feces as well, if they were to be included. The native Karamjans are the niggers of Runescape, and dress like their Apefreakan cousins, only they are much more well-behaved. Happy? I wont even bother to comment on your complaints of the masculinity and femininity of the genders. Your lunatic mind has been convinced that “gender is a social construct” no?

I highly doubt you even play Runescape. Feminism: It’s a perversion and mental disorder.

Do the Gnoblin diplomacy qeust in rune. The goblins is taked insipration from Bloodz gang and Cripz gang, and also talkin gibberish and shit.