Skin Tones and Ethnic Features

Based on the “African-American Term” discussion, I wanted to talk about features in games that limit to only specific European features like light/pale tones, thin noses, straight/wavy hair, etc.

I have noticed this a lot in many games. The lack of ethnic features for people of color or white people with features outside the “European beauty standards.”

What do you think? Do companies do this deliberately? Do you think they just serve to one demographic or care for only one?

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@ShanniiWrites
@ChaoticDeluge

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:wink:

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I’m incredibly pale, and thankfully unlike my family I tan easier than I burn in the sun. So, it’s generally pretty easy to make me in a game. Blue eyes, dark hair, etc. The only things that tend to be difficult for me is that if I were to grow out my beard any it’d most likely be ginger. And the type of pale I am is actually closer to grey than the orangey-pink most white people are.

Scottish is fun. There’s so much about my culture in general that no-one understands or cares about because we just can’t be *ssed educating them. Now, I’m off to hunt some haggis and stitch me kilt over a whiskey with the lads

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This is The Lord of the Rings Online. Tolkien, who wrote LOTR, has actually written that there are black humans in Middle Earth. Sure, they’re all evil, but that was in the the 40s and they do exist.

Now, on a non-canon game where you’re supposed to be able to play as yourself, where are the brown and black skin tones?

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It doesn’t let you change it in that game?

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I don’t know about now, but I know the reason I stopped playing it after customisation was because I couldn’t be brown. Those are the only options there

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So you’re telling…It’s *ss.

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Reminds me why I dropped so many games :woman_facepalming:

Them: Oh, it’s too hard to shade and correctly modify our features to complement darker tones. Let’s just forget about all of them altogether! No one cares!

Recieves Hate Mail

Them: What could’ve caused this?

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I always leave games when it doesn’t let me change the skin colors into anything dark. Automatic uninstall. That’s why I liked the game “Love and Hip Hop” because it only let you play as darker skin tones. Brown to Dark. :smirk:

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And I hate how Episode artists that are really somewhat good say they don’t want to use dark skin tones because “it’s hard to see the features” when they LITERALLY use the colors black and many other dark colors for their pale characters.

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Imagine only letting people customise themselves to be white in a non-canon game. And they can’t even use the argument about Middle Earth being predominantly white. For one, most people’s skin tones aren’t specified. Then there’s the fact that the game isn’t canon. You’re supposed to be able to make your own character. Then there’s the fact that there are actually black people in Middle Earth anyway. You let them be like 8 magical races, but they can’t even be brown? This is actually a case of them favouring white people.

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And no one can say it’s more hard work. Adding extra colours isn’t hard work in a customisation system that gives you a sliding scale like this rather than set-in-stone colours. It doesn’t affect how the game runs at all. If it did, they wouldn’t give you so much choice. It’s almost a colour wheel! There are no set colours there – except white

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When it comes to art if you go through any kind of formal training you’re only really taught to blend white skin tones? It’s actually a genuine problem being railed against at the moment in more traditional fine art settings.

Like recent digital art and illustration courses are different (This was what I did), but from what I’ve heard about portraiture, fine art and the like… Very white-centric.

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I also notice that a lot of artist who try, God Bless their souls, to draw African, Carribean, Mexican, etc. characters often have European feautures rather than ones they should naturally have that fits their background and genes. The outcome looks weird but, that may just be me.

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Don’t even get me started on that. :joy: It’s like they just gave a white person dark skin.

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I know…it’s like, I apprecate the effort but…

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Yeah, because they’re probably used to drawing white people so they use the same rules and techniques. Instead of learning by combining steadfast model rules with lifedrawing like you’re taught to in illustration.

I was fairly careful with that personally, but most people don’t really care. They don’t realise the ‘model baselines’ used in portraiture are based on white people

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Ooh since that first picture was taken, the bottom right corner is almost brown. Oh so it is possible then, huh? And look how much choice there is for white skin tones compared to brown. You still can’t have black :joy:

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Not to mention the whole style, UI and look is completely ripped off from World of Warcraft… Which let you be black :upside_down_face:

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