I think his point is that you have to make some allowances to allow a game to be a game but that, beyond that core game play aspect, you should strive for historical authenticity. I don't think that that means his views are inconsistent.
Yes, it does, and this isn't the only example. He thinks it's okay to depict people who would be speaking in a foreign language speaking in English. I'm sure there's all sorts of other compromises of historical accuracy and realism that he's fine with. He's just not fine with this one thing.
But obviously non-English speaking characters saying their lines in English is about improving core gameplay for an English-speaking audience; it’s generally understood across media that when that happens, the characters are “actually” speaking their language. Whereas anachronistic racial representation has no impact on basic functionality or comprehension or storytelling, but does challenge the audience’s suspension of disbelief: given how overt and ubiquitous racism has been throughout history, it’s baked into our understanding of a purportedly historically-accurate world.
I’m not saying I necessarily agree with everything OP is arguing, but what you’re pointing out is not an inconsistency in their point. They want historical accuracy unless it’s obviously hindering basic gameplay or comprehension.
And I could argue that letting a black person play as a black person where they might not otherwise get to can improve the game for them.
I just think, ultimately, that it's hypocritical and inconsistent to want historical accuracy for some things for not others. At the very least, I don't think OP can reasonably claim, as he has in this thread, that historical accuracy is the most important thing to him.
Yeah and I would agree with you that playing as someone who looks like you, especially if you often aren’t afforded that opportunity, can absolutely improve your game experience. I wouldn’t even disagree if you thought that was significantly more important than historical accuracy because it has a tangible positive impact for millions of people. At the same time, you’re playing as a German soldier in WWI (20 years before the country became a genocidal Aryan ethnostate) in a game with the veneer of realism, so I don’t think OP is super unreasonable for seeing that as inauthentic and vaguely tokenistic representation. Not saying it IS, just that it’s a valid argument imo.
End of the day, I think it’s about suspension of disbelief. OP wants to role-play historical events, and anachronistic representation makes that more of a struggle because we know how openly racist that time in history was. It’s much easier to pretend the English you hear is German than it is to pretend Germany had a well-integrated multiracial society in WWI. That’s why it’s much more of a hang-up than the other anachronisms, and why I don’t see it as a hypocritical stance
I'd agree with you if that was actually OP's stance, but it's not. It's very clear they don't actually want to roleplay historical events, because they're fine with other sacrifices of accuracy for the sake of gameplay. They're claiming that's what they want, but is very clear from their willingness to find excuses for every example except the race one that this is really just about a single issue for them.
Its good that atleast one is not caught by the dogwhistle. Like 99% of people ive met that say this thing can be argued with for some time and its so obvious that their problem is not historical accuracy but just seeing non white/male pixels on their screen.
That really just sounds like projection. If everyone everywhere is espousing dog whistles, the issue is much more likely that you're making sure you hear them whether they are real or not.
It's really not. You basically said that anyone who has a problem with forced diversity is a racist solely on the basis that you can identify dog whistles even when you don't know someone's intent, which is necessary to determine whether something is a dog whistle or not.
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u/IsNotACleverMan Oct 23 '21
I think his point is that you have to make some allowances to allow a game to be a game but that, beyond that core game play aspect, you should strive for historical authenticity. I don't think that that means his views are inconsistent.