oh WOW!

                After reading Ritter's piece, I thought that it was really interesting that a game would incorporate different races. I've never played RPGs before so I never really thought about it. Although, I have thought about other games in a different way since reading this piece. The article made it clear that the Horde or 'evil' creatures live in minority style towns or speak in their languages. At first I was skeptical. I thought that while I'm sure that some buildings resemble tepees, the makers are just trying to create a variety of features. After playing as a Tauren, I realized that the game creators really took it to an extreme level. The people themselves are supposed to have a love of nature as well as having braids and feathers in their hair. Their buildings are distinctly based of Native Americans not just merely resembling a teepee. The correlation was so blatant that I actually started laughing. The Orcs terrain was clearly made to look like a savannah and others were a colony of islands. The details in the game are so specific that it is undisputable that the creators were influenced by these cultures.

                However, I don't think the game-makers are racist, just simply following standard protocol in America. They certainly don't seem help equality but I feel that most of the characters are based on stereotypes and fantasy. I don't remember any black characters in the Lord of the Rings which seems to have a influence on WOW. I think the game-makers established themselves as the heroes in the game and while I have no data to prove it, they were probably white. They wanted to live an adventure and there are two options: be the hero, or the villain. If you are the hero, you naturally want to save the damsel in distress (much like we talked about in class) and defeat the most terrifying monster you can. Most monsters in our culture are depicted not depicted as white. Unless you count serial killers. Our monsters are giant creatures like werewolves, sharks, all kinds of aliens of terrifying designs, and even Frankenstein was green.  Now the only white monster, vampires, have become the heroes in movies. It actually just occurred to me that the werewolves in Twilight were also natives. The makers of WOW were also most likely male. This leads to all of the females ,humans at least, having large breasts and small waists. Again, I think it is less about sexism and more about trying to entertain a largely male audience. When the percentage of female games rivals that of male, then maybe the games gender portrayal will change.

                The points that Ritter makes are very interesting and will likely lead to the study of many other games through a racial viewpoint. I couldn't tell if he really thinks the creators are racist but his essay brought up very intriguing questions.