lip service is insufficient

[sev]

I hate that I'm complicit in stuff like this.

so, I've been playing City of Heroes. It's a massively-multiplayer superhero game.

Recently, a bunch of screenshots previewing the next update were posted over on gamespot. One of the new features coming up involves the character-generation-system, so there's a bunch of screenshots of the character generator.

The character generation engine supports a wide range of skin colors -- warm, neutral, and cool skin tones from very light to very dark, and a bunch of not-normal-skin-colors (green, blue, purple, etc.) But...every single example character in the character-generator-screenshots is light-skinned.

In the other screenshots -- the ones where you actually see characters in action -- skin color is harder to determine; oftentimes characters have enough mask-and-costume that you can't see *any* of their skin, or what little skin they're showing happens to not be facing the 'camera', or they're surrounded by some game-effect that makes it hard to see them at all. But for the ones where I *could* see their skin color -- all light-colored. The handful of green- and blue-skinned heroes were even light green and light blue.

They did a bit better in their "ensemble" shot of thirty heroes -- two heroes with dead-white skin tones, ten with what I consider european peach skin tones, maybe four with darker skin, one with this bizzare greenish-brown color, and the rest showing no skin or whose skin color is obviously-unnatural (purple, orange, blue, magenta). I do think it's relevant to note that the two darker-skinned male heroes showed no skin but the lower halves of their faces, and both of the female darker-skinned heroes were showing a whole lotta thigh. In contrast, the scantily-clad lighter-skinned heroes were fewer and further between, and were equally distributed across gender lines.

It is, in case anybody was wondering, insufficient that they made this engine that supports any skin color you want. I don't accept as an excuse that the superhero genre is racist and they're just being true to the archetypical (white) comic book hero. If you provide a relatively race-blind tool, you spoil it when you only ever show it used for white people. You don't get credit for lip service. You don't get a "get out of being racist free" card for doing only the easy parts. And you don't get to blame your own racism on the genre you chose to create in.

As I said, I'm part of the problem: Most of my characters have the same skin tone as I do. Probably the people who made the screenshots were all white, so their characters have the same skin tone as *they* do. It doesn't excuse me and it doesn't excuse them.

I really hate it when I find out that I'm complicit in this sort of thing. It usually happens when I'm building up a good head of steam about somebody *else* doing it, too.

(and now, I'm taking my heroes to the tailor to pay for some skin-tone-variation...)

Comments

[crack-city.livejournal.com]

So I don't know what to do about that, I really don't. Thinking about my characters, I've got:
* Chiton -- very very sickly-pale
* Irradiated Riot -- Whose skin you can't see at all because of her costume (and, er, well, she plays with radiation, showing skin doesn't seem wise)
* Missie Riot - Grey
* Rorarii - Also grey (though a bit darker grey than Missie, I think).
* Melted Flame - Somewhat pale skinned.
* Angelic Riot - Very fair-skinned.
* Demonic Riot - Grey skinned (though somewhat lighter grey than Missie or Rorarii)
* Riot Red - on the tanner side of fair
* FlightRisk - Pale
* Irradiated Taxi - A robot in yellow and green
* Stiletto Red - pale grey (with spots!)

I can't remember what the rest look like, but I tend to prefer trying to make them look, er, well, unnatural since many of the characters I play are mutants or science accidents or magical creatures.

I play with the colors I like (thus the plethora of purple-and-black costumed characters), and the color combinations I like. And I don't know what to do about the fact that I seem to like the look of pale pale pale as far as skin-tone (or, well, weird colors), which isn't quite where my skin-tone is, but is certainly close.

Feh. Babbling...

[amai-unmei.livejournal.com]

I had hoped that the influx of dark-skinned Indians into the game market would further the enlightening notion that people want to play characters that look like them (for the most part) and that this would encourage game makers to look beyond the paler spectrum of skin color.

Personally, I promise not to make any extrapolations about any person's embedded racism. I just want everyone to be able to play with a character that looks like them. Or have the option not to, should that be the case.

[crack-city.livejournal.com]

Oh wait. Missie is purple. Not grey. Or something. Gah. No... brain... or just too many characters to keep track of...

[crack-city.livejournal.com]

The comments in the city_of_heroes post that linked to the screen shots for I4 have become... interesting. Apparently, the flat-chestedness of the female slider doesn't get terribly flat. And, well, I find that problematic, too. Again, the fact that the comic book industry caters primarily to males doesn't make the assumption that all female characters must have t3h b00bies an okay thing. As I said in that thread, there are plenty of women whose physiques could (and perhaps did) accomodate large breasts who don't have them for whatever reason, and I think if the devs are going to go the route of "we can adjust breast size" that it should give a fuller (er, no pun intended) range of choices.

[sev]

I think you're somewhat off the hook as most of your characters have obviously-unnatural skin colors in the first place. :) I'm amused at how many of your characters have thoroughly unsaturated greys for skin-tones, though. :)

I note with distress that beyond CS, none of my characters are high enough level to manage the trip to the tailor's just yet. I guess it's good to have goals....

I like the way CS looks now that she's got duskier skin and darker hair.

[sev]

[ I had hoped that the influx of dark-skinned Indians into the game market would further the enlightening notion that people want to play characters that look like them (for the most part) and that this would encourage game makers to look beyond the paler spectrum of skin color. ]

sigh. we could hope, I guess. Though it does seem that most men, of any color, want to make big-breasted white females...

[sev]

I didn't see the comments, but I did notice that about the screen-shots. I'm gonna withhold judgement on *that* one 'till I get to play with the sliders myself...though I'm worried.

[crack-city.livejournal.com]

Heh... yeah, I do seem to do the grey-skin thing a lot...

[[ I note with distress that beyond CS, none of my characters are high enough level to manage the trip to the tailor's just yet. I guess it's good to have goals.... ]]

Or friends with Recall Friend. ;)

[crack-city.livejournal.com]

I didn't notice that the slider was all the way to the left when I first looked at the screen shots. It wasn't until someone specifically pointed out that "this is about as flat as it gets, gang" that I went, "Wahh?"

I think FlightRisk needs to be much less buxom than the slider's gonna let her be. >.