Love Letter to Person Who Demands Racial Quotas in Witcher 3 By Patryk Kowalik
There’s often a lot of misunderstandings and controversy when cultures clash. There’s a lot of assumptions, things that go without saying in our daily interactions, this all gets thrown out of the window when we meet people from entirely different culture, things get only worse if these people look like us and we expect them to be like us. This editorial is a monumental task, as I will attempt to explain something so basic, it’s not even expressed in our verbal or nonverbal day-to-day communications. I will bring up some tangential ideas, which don't directly relate to current debate, but are essential to know in order to understand underlying logics.
Because, in fact the problem is not that Witcher 3 has no black characters, it could (as I will speak later on). The problem is how you demand it. How you demand foreign culture to bend over and match your own sensibilities.
First, let’s talk about the country itself: Poland is both ethnically and racially homogenous, our biggest minorities are Silesians, Germans and Belarusians (FYI, all white people). Where history of oppression and discrimination in America are tied to race, in Poland it’s much more nuanced, tied to language, culture and nationality (since we all are white around here, but still wanted to discriminate against each other). Speaking of which, let me introduce you to Partitions of Poland during which 3 sovereign powers took Polish lands for over 100 years and tried to erase polish language and culture. The country briefly regained independence after WW1, only to lose it after WW2, when it became communist puppet-state with widespread censorship where history was altered, art policed and every political opinion was dangerous one. That ended only 25 years ago. But hey, why stop only on history - Poles are still discriminated against in modern Europe and there is such thing as anti-polish sentiment through the countries.
How does Witcher 3: Wild Hunt stand in all of that? It’s polish game made in Poland, based on polish books written by polish author, which are based on polish mythos and slavic mythology as a whole. Poles are so proud of it, that Witcher 2 was gifted to president Obama, when he visited Poland in 2011. Needless to say, the series is a big deal, it’s both product and representative of foreign (at least to everyone outside of Poland) culture.
Now that we understand the sentiment Poles have to their culture, as well as Witcher's place in it lets see how racial quota demands look like in this context. To people from multiracial countries, demanding racial diversity in video game might seem like something good, a progressive thing. However the game is not just any game, it’s Witcher. Game made in country which battled through history to maintain it’s own heritage and language, game which builds upon slavic mythology and promotes it internationally. You're trying to shoehorn foreign elements into their culture, enforce your own standards onto theirs. In case I haven't hammered my point down strongly enough: you have people of a minority culture that were persecuted and discriminated against in last 250 years, who made this awesome work of art that represents them, and you're telling them to change it because it's not American enough.
Just as you wouldn't demand Hua Mulan’s story to feature black characters, or Anansi’s to feature white, you shouldn't demand Witcher to feature black, asian or native american people. Why must everything cater to American sensibilities and culture? Why can't we celebrate diversity - the true diversity of having global market with works of art from all around the world?
Oh, I almost forgot, I promised to speak of a way to include PoC in Witcher, so here it goes: in world of Witcher, there’s a country to far south-east called Zerrikania. People there have darker skin, worship golden dragon and have spiders that kill elephants. “Geralt travers to Zerrikania” would be badass expansion that I would totally love to play. And after that, who knows? Maybe the country’s next to sea, with multicultural port towns, with non-Africa and non-Asia even further away? There’s nothing written about these lands, so anything could be a thing! Damn now I got myself excited.
Do you see the subtle - yet incredibly important - difference? I speak of expanding and building upon established lore to tell more stories. To add and built upon, to create. You want to change existing works and story (which are part of foreign to you culture) to cater to what you want. In my ideal world there are all kinds of games with all kinds of stories from all around the world. In yours, every game features american society.
In shorts, I want to diversify, you want to homogenize.
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