Habits of Whiteness in the Witcher 3


Habits of Whiteness are something very prevalent in modern stories about the Medieval. A popular game that falls under the genres of fantasy and medievalism is The Witcher 3. It is considered fantasy because of the monsters and fictional plot line that do not correlate to the way the real world works. It is considered medievalism because of things like the time period, the war, and the devotion to the middle ages within the game. Some of these things include the outdated weapons/ the use of swords as well as older buildings and the idea of knighthood. These are all important for understanding the genre of the game. After that, there becomes an issue of race immediately. There are two options for a character: a white male or a white female. That’s it. There is no option to create a character that represents the player in any way. This can maybe be excused because there are minimal options for customization anyway, but it is something to think about.  
There are people of color in the game, but there are quite few. The few that are in the game are seen as slaves or are burned in places where there has been a war. There is an obvious class difference that can be seen especially because the people in power are white and have enslaved the people of color. Because there are hardly any people of color in the game, one would begin to believe that they weren’t there in the medieval period or that they were completely illiterate, but in fact, there were plenty of people of color spread out across all of Europe during this time period. It is inconsistencies with history like these that lead white people to believe that they are in control society and lead to habits of whiteness. These are habits of the white community that put people of other races and colors below them. Some things that whitewashed games like this one can lead to are the miseducation of young people into believing that people of color were only in one place or that they came over as slaves later. This is just simply false and when white people believe things like that, they then start to put themselves a little higher than people of any other color because they have been more important throughout history. Though the game is quite fun and has many different places to visit and quests to go on, it represents history in an inaccurate way. This is completely fine being that the game is obviously fantasy, but because of this, people must understand that so is the society. It is not very representational of the real world during the medieval period and is; therefore, not an excuse for the habits of whiteness in society, but unfortunately it creates them. I think some problems like this could be solved by allowing the creation of a character with whatever skin color they want and to have a family and history that matches that color. These will, of course not be terribly important to the story line of the game, but it gives more accurate representations and it even furthers the lack of excuse for habits of whiteness. Overall, representations of the medieval period through fantasy are rather whitewashed, but with the creation of a fantasy with people of color prevalent, there could be some progression.


Comments

  1. ZakFebruary 21, 2018 at 6:31 PM

    While it is disappointing the way you describe the way that the people of color in the Witcher are treated, the character creation aspect isn't as bad, at least when you take into account that it shouldn't actually exist. Since the game is based on a series of novels, and uses the protagonists of said novels as the protagonist, who was also the protagonist of the previous two games, it honestly makes no sense why they decided to include a character creation aspect in the third and final game in the series, when you have been playing as a male the whole time already. It would be like the main character in your favorite story changing from male to female for no real purpose, with no one commenting on it. It would just be weird and serve no purpose. While a whole different argument can be had on these other subjects, I don't think it is that strange that you aren't allowed a large amount of customization over a character who has already been defined over books and two previous games. Really, it is just strange that they give you the ability to play as a different gender of the same character in the first place.

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  2. Kianna MarrsFebruary 22, 2018 at 10:01 PM

    Unfortunately, racism exists in all aspects of life, including action filled video games. As you stated in your blog post, the history of black people does not only consist of their treacherous experience of enslavement. However, that is what the habits of the white community want its readers, players, and viewers to believe. Video games like Witcher 3 continue to build the misconception of people of color being powerless, unintelligent, and barbaric. Although racism may not demolish completely, there are always ways to help demolish large pieces of it. One of the main steps in doing so is educating others on the world's accurate history.

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  3. tom blakeMarch 17, 2018 at 6:54 PM

    My understanding of the Witcher 3 is that it doesn't give you the ability to play as a woman (sorry to burst that bubble) except in post-game content and computer mods. It tends to follow the novels pretty closely, meaning you're following Geralt's journey from his POV and only playing as Ciri (the female side-character) for small portions of the journey without said mod. When you factor in that most female characters serve as pieces of meat for seduction side plots with gratuitous nudity for male fans (the game is obligingly heteronormative), and that aside from Ciri Geralt can sleep with every strong female character, it begins to fail the gender test as well as the race test. Dragon Age: Inquisition is a game that took criticisms from its predecessors and turned out a game with better representation. I'll go ahead and link an article on it here: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-incidental-diversity-of-dragon-age-inquistion

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