{"id":9113,"date":"2009-05-11T10:40:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T15:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=9113"},"modified":"2009-11-26T04:39:29","modified_gmt":"2009-11-26T09:39:29","slug":"reproducing-gender-and-race-stereotypes-in-runescape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/05\/11\/reproducing-gender-and-race-stereotypes-in-runescape\/","title":{"rendered":"Reproducing Gender And Race Stereotypes in RuneScape"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hoshi sent us <a href=\"http:\/\/www.runescape.com\/l=0\/kbase\/view.ws?guid=diary_runenergy\" target=\"_blank\">concept artwork for some new characters<\/a>, all set to be musicians,\u00a0in development for the online game, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.runescape.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">RuneScape<\/a>.\u00a0 Here they are:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9114 aligncenter\" title=\"busker_concepts\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/05\/busker_concepts.jpg\" alt=\"busker_concepts\" width=\"600\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/05\/busker_concepts.jpg 600w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/05\/busker_concepts-300x150.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hoshi notes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>1. The caucasians are well dressed and most likely designed for the cities. The people of color are wearing tribal gear. In other words, they fill the &#8220;exotic&#8221; and &#8220;primative&#8221; section in the game, while the white people are the &#8220;refined&#8221; upper class.<\/p>\n<p>2. The women look like they just finished dancing. They both have one hand on their hips (slightly seductive) and the other hand is in a &#8220;flowing&#8221; movement. Conversely, the men have balled up fists with their arms held slightly apart. They may be smiling, but their body language shows aggression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hoshi started <a href=\"http:\/\/forum.runescape.com\/c=jo6AHwS3UO4\/forums.ws?15,16,612,58735650\" target=\"_blank\">a discussion thread<\/a> with this observation at RuneScape and her comments have been met with significant opposition.\u00a0 Summarizing the comments, she explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One of the most common arguments that it *isn&#8217;t* racist is that this game is set in a medieval setting and there wouldn&#8217;t be people of color in the cities. Frankly, I think that&#8217;s an absurd excuse. This game freely utilizes magic, monsters, gods, and all sorts of unrealistic things. If you follow the players&#8217; logic, that means it&#8217;s more believable to have talking cats than to have a person of color dressed nicely in a city. That&#8217;s just messed up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For more examples of race and gender stereotypes in video and online games, see <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/02\/16\/this-is-what-rape-culture-looks-like\/\" target=\"_self\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/01\/03\/its-hard-being-a-tween-today\/\" target=\"_self\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/12\/17\/miss-bimbo-vs-sexy-beach-3\/\" target=\"_self\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/12\/11\/medal-of-honor-the-all-white-war\/\" target=\"_self\">here<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/04\/18\/border-patrol-video-game\/\" target=\"_self\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hoshi sent us concept artwork for some new characters, all set to be musicians,\u00a0in development for the online game, RuneScape.\u00a0 Here they are: Hoshi notes: 1. The caucasians are well dressed and most likely designed for the cities. The people of color are wearing tribal gear. In other words, they fill the &#8220;exotic&#8221; and &#8220;primative&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,778,285,1760],"class_list":["post-9113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-intersectionality","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9113"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16352,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9113\/revisions\/16352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}