Racists are harming their own race

Gogo · 2020-09-25 16:15:40

I was in white fam and we needed rubber, I took a 0.9 trip to black town to get it, cause someone told me via radio they got a lot. And they did! But there were 2 hostile people in black town, I said hi and did nothing wrong, one wanted to shank me and other said I don't belong here (he has bow), like I didn't knew lol. So instead of asking leader for exchange (horse + rubber for my trip to gingers, blacks needed kero) I just took their horse, took their bucket with rubber and came back to my home. Good for me, lose for them. That's the results of racism which I'll never be part of, I think it's for dumb people who just wanna boss around other races to feel more important in their own (that's my impression).

DestinyCall · 2020-09-25 16:57:18

Yeah, I have also encountered hostility and prejudice as a vanilla dude in a foreign town. And been randomly accused of being a racist because of my skintone which boggles my mind due to the sheer hypocrisy of such an assumption.

I think some of the hostility stems from the translator race being without any useful unique trade items of their own. They tend to be scavengers by design.

Incidentally, this is why so many people complain about the biome restrictions being an inherently racist game mechanic. If you develop a prejudice that all white people are dishonest horse thieves and useless beggars that is supported by the game forcing them into a lifestyle of thievery.

System racism at its finest.

Arcurus · 2020-09-25 17:03:21

DestinyCall wrote:

Yeah, I have also encountered hostility and prejudice as a vanilla dude in a foreign town. And been randomly accused of being a racist because of my skintone which boggles my mind due to the sheer hypocrisy of such an assumption.
I think some of the hostility stems from the translator race being without any useful unique trade items of their own. They tend to be scavengers by design.
Incidentally, this is why so many people complain about the biome restrictions being an inherently racist game mechanic. If you develop a prejudice that all white people are dishonest horse thieves and useless beggars that is supported by the game forcing them into a lifestyle of thievery.
System racism at its finest.

yea whites are quite useless scavengers currently, but i guess it has more to do with the race stuff / election going on in Amerika.

By the way remembered my first life being born as black. Was quite interesting experience now it is so normal

Rookwood · 2020-09-25 17:31:16

This is not a problem that exists in the game. Any foreigners are likely to get killed by aggressive players when entering a town. You should always scope out the feel of the town by scouting around the outskirts and see if anyone is aggro before running straight into the middle of it.

A lot of the noob wave from this weekend have graduated to the "pvp" stage of wanting to murder people all the time. Last night the white fam forged a dozen swords and went on a raid against browns and managed to declare war. People just want to kill. Don't take it personally or read too far into it...

DestinyCall · 2020-09-25 17:47:08

Umm how is this not a problem that exists in OHOL?

You literally just described what we are talking about in your post. I have definitely experienced being targeted because of my skin color. I have been called racist slurs. I've been told that I was a slave and that I must obey my "master" when born as a black child in a muli-race town. I have witnessed people war-mongering based on skin color - wanting to kill all the *insert bad words here* and wipe them off the map.

If you choose to ignore the racist sub-texts and tell yourself it is just a game, that's on you. But racism is real in OHOL. We bring it into the game from the real world and the game design reinforces it inside the game world.

Rookwood · 2020-09-25 17:56:57

You have been called racist slurs because racists exist in real life. Jason can't do anything about that. He can't control players that RP racist tropes. None of this is derived from the games mechanics. It is all derived from the players.

Whether biome restriction is a good system is another discussion than racist players in the community.

I curse and kill racist players when I see them. You should too.

Again, this is different than the issue of people who are just aggro to other families that come into their town.

You're conflating a lot of different issues here and it doesn't help discussion.

Last edited by Rookwood (2020-09-25 18:03:05)

Arcurus · 2020-09-25 18:02:32

Rookwood wrote:

This is not a problem that exists in the game. Any foreigners are likely to get killed by aggressive players when entering a town. You should always scope out the feel of the town by scouting around the outskirts and see if anyone is aggro before running straight into the middle of it.
A lot of the noob wave from this weekend have graduated to the "pvp" stage of wanting to murder people all the time. Last night the white fam forged a dozen swords and went on a raid against browns and managed to declare war. People just want to kill. Don't take it personally or read too far into it...

how is the war mechanics actual working? Can they kill other if at war?

Rookwood · 2020-09-25 18:06:01

War activates swords. Swords have a lower cooldown on kill I think? Possibly means you need a smaller posse? Anyway you need two elders from each family to say war in each others language so it's not easy to start.

We had a traitor old man who agreed to start the war with them.

They nearly killed both towns in the process. Both in taking resources from the white fam to forge the swords, eat food to make the trek, etc. and they took over the brown's bakery and we could not cook food for like 15 minutes.

It was not the glorious battle they were hoping for and basically resulted in just making the game suck for everyone involved.

Last edited by Rookwood (2020-09-25 18:12:09)

DestinyCall · 2020-09-25 18:17:17

So just like real war, huh?

Arcurus · 2020-09-25 18:20:54

Rookwood wrote:

War activates swords. Swords have a lower cooldown on kill I think? Possibly means you need a smaller posse? Anyway you need two elders from each family to say war in each others language so it's not easy to start.
We had a traitor old man who agreed to start the war with them.
They nearly killed both towns in the process. Both in taking resources from the white fam to forge the swords, eat food to make the trek, etc. and they took over the brown's bakery and we could not cook food for like 15 minutes.
It was not the glorious battle they were hoping for and basically resulted in just making the game suck for everyone involved.

I wonder if the declared war also enabled to attack others without the need to have more allies then enemies. If not how did they fight each other?

Coconut Fruit · 2020-09-25 18:24:45

I feel sad for people who see racism everywhere. Why did you assume that they were hostile because of your different skin color? Did they tell you that? Maybe they were hostile because they were scared of a thief, which in the end you turned out to be one.

Rookwood · 2020-09-25 18:27:34

Slinky said that when war is declared it means swords can be used like they always have. No cooldown and no posse needed to kill.

I ran into the jungle with my daughter when it happened because they had six swords and we had none. When I came back there were a bunch of corpses and all but one of them had gotten too old to hold the sword. So we picked up one they had dropped and killed him.

DestinyCall · 2020-09-25 18:36:44

Coconut Fruit wrote:

I feel sad for people who see racism everywhere. Why did you assume that they were hostile because of your different skin color? Did they tell you that? Maybe they were hostile because they were scared of a thief, which in the end you turned out to be one.

I don't see racism "everywhere", but I am not blind to racism when it is right in front of me. It makes me said that some people want to believe racism is just imaginary or a thing of the dark, distant past. How do you not notice this stuff? It isn't subtle. Ignoring it is not a proper solution.

I knew they were reacting to my skin color because they TOLD me. I didn't have to assume anything.

Dodge · 2020-09-25 19:29:33

The biome specialization is not the real issue in that regards the homeland update is much more at fault here.

Since you cant give birth unless you're in your homeland and homelands are one family and each family is only one race it inevitably leads to every villlage being only one race and every foreigner being another race (except in some rare cases) so since every other race is automatically from another village you are suspicious of them by default since you dont know their intentions.

If we had biome specialization but no homeland you could have multiracial villages and other race would not be equal to someone from another village that might steal your stuff.

So truly it's the homeland update that is causing the issue.

If the biomes where much bigger and spaced out with natural barriers like oceans, meaning that you couldn't just walk a few minutes and find any biome you want then there would be no need for the homeland update and we could have multiracial villages, since it wouldn't be an issue to have multicultural specialties in one village because the other biome would be so far away that for example a "south american" would have to travel all the way to the jungle to get rubber and couldn't just walk there and get back with rubber a few minutes later.

So there would be no advantage of having someone brown in your village since you have to travel across the ocean anyway and then you can trade with the civilisation that is settled in that part of the world instead of getting it yourself, so since it would give no advantage to have other races in your village it wouldn't become an issue and the homeland update could be removed and we could have settlements, multi racial villages etc.

Gogo · 2020-09-25 19:34:20

War / peace is broken system. Swords does nothing, they can be used during war, but you still need posse.

What I saw recently: whites came to brown town with swords, for war. They needed to wait there to declare it, lol. Brown baker dislikes his own people, so he talked with white one about making war. Actually no brown was killed, just whites. Correct me if I'm wrong.

DestinyCall wrote:

I think some of the hostility stems from the translator race being without any useful unique trade items of their own. They tend to be scavengers by design.

System is dumb, yes. But hostility scares off even the peaceful players who wanna negotiate like me, I just took the needed stuff instead.

Arcurus · 2020-09-25 19:44:12

lol, everything that comes, spoon always breaks down to fathers, dodge to a limited world and i? maybe to get rid of family iron

Yea i also thought that posse is still in place, so the one with more allies could just kill the one with less...

Hmm maybe for me it always comes down to have more again single skilled based combat

Starknight_One · 2020-09-25 21:08:51

Arcurus wrote:

lol, everything that comes, spoon always breaks down to fathers, dodge to a limited world and i? maybe to get rid of family iron
Yea i also thought that posse is still in place, so the one with more allies could just kill the one with less...
Hmm maybe for me it always comes down to have more again single skilled based combat

You mean Tarr's Griefer Dance? It's funny that Jason didn't leave that in, given his insistence upon griefing being necessary for drama.

Spoonwood · 2020-09-25 21:26:35

Rookwood wrote:

You have been called racist slurs because racists exist in real life. Jason can't do anything about that. He can't control players that RP racist tropes. None of this is derived from the games mechanics. It is all derived from the players.
Whether biome restriction is a good system is another discussion than racist players in the community.

It's restriction of player access to biomes on the basis of their race. Players of certain races have expectations based on their race. You're supposed to identify with your character, not distance yourself from them. Some knowledgeable black player is expected to get horses, because they're black, if they're trying to survive and help their family survive for a sufficiently long time period. Knowledgeable whites get expected to talk to more players outside of their family or steal. And so on.

People want to call the system "biome restriction". Biomes aren't restricted. The biomes are exactly the same whether race restrictions are on or off. I guess one could say that the system is biome *access* restrictions. But what is the cause of those restrictions? It's the number of players on the server and the race of the players trying to access such. So, "biome restriction" is a lie with respect to how the system works. Really, a "biome restriction" would be an object getting removed from a biome, I guess?

The tall/short object feature/bug talked about here https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6365 by Jason with pictures is more like a biome restriction than race restrictions. Objects get restricted from spawning in certain biomes, hence the term "biome restriction".

Spoonwood · 2020-09-25 22:43:23

Dodge wrote:

...

Biomes get specialized by being of different types with different features. It's race specialization, if viewed positively, because it's player access to biomes on the basis of their race and the number of players on the server. I suppose one could say biome *access* specialization.

Family name, of course, is already tracked in game. It would thus seem simple to use the names of the biomes and put it next to the family. You might have something like "Eve Dodge -Tundra" or perhaps better "Eve Dodge - T", or more ideally small pictures of a biome tile. If the family doesn't get a name, it never gets a specialization. Players would have an encouragement to think of family when planning for specialty tasks. It would also provide an in-game clue of where one would have the dropsy and one would not.

Joeeee · 2020-09-25 22:58:55

Spoonwood wrote:

If the family doesn't get a name, it never gets a specialization. Players would have an encouragement to think of family when planning for specialty tasks. It would also provide an in-game clue of where one would have the dropsy and one would not.

Would this work like whites or would it work like they can go anywhere they want?

Caprys · 2020-09-25 23:12:39

DestinyCall wrote:

Umm how is this not a problem that exists in OHOL?
You literally just described what we are talking about in your post. I have definitely experienced being targeted because of my skin color. I have been called racist slurs. I've been told that I was a slave and that I must obey my "master" when born as a black child in a muli-race town. I have witnessed people war-mongering based on skin color - wanting to kill all the *insert bad words here* and wipe them off the map.
If you choose to ignore the racist sub-texts and tell yourself it is just a game, that's on you. But racism is real in OHOL. We bring it into the game from the real world and the game design reinforces it inside the game world.

I'v been called a slave too, but I was a white woman helping in a black town.

DestinyCall · 2020-09-25 23:53:25

Caprys wrote:

I'v been called a slave too, but I was a white woman helping in a black town.

Classy.

Spoonwood · 2020-09-26 02:30:22

Joeeee wrote:

Spoonwood wrote:
If the family doesn't get a name, it never gets a specialization. Players would have an encouragement to think of family when planning for specialty tasks. It would also provide an in-game clue of where one would have the dropsy and one would not.
Would this work like whites or would it work like they can go anywhere they want?

I have doubts that it could work at all.

I think attaching biome access to the family name might have a conflict with families having different languages. The language translation system might have to get assigned to the player by some default characteristic in order for human made text to translate into gibberish.

Maybe it theoretically would be better to think about biome access as a sort of profession. Each family has two of the three speciality biomes by default without any of the naming magic, in a list like [{tundra, jungle}, {jungle, desert}, {desert, tundra}] where each family gets one element of the list, and each player gets to select one biome of their set. The player has something like TJ, JD, or DT by their family name or 'you' initially if the server has more than 14 players on it. They might say something like "I WANT TUNDRA" or "I WANT DESERT", and their profession lasts the rest of their life. If a player doesn't say one by say 55, they end up saying "I WANT "X"" automatically where "X" is one of the biomes in their list.

As for universal translator access, maybe that goes in the sets in the list also, or maybe it doesn't. It's complete nonsense that such would exist in some hypothetical future. Universal translator access should have to be technologically acquired, not naturally given to families for free. Having it for some family by default while others don't smacks of them being intellectually superior, even if they are physically less gifted.

DestinyCall · 2020-09-26 06:11:07

I remember when I first started playing OHOL, I was really impressed by the way the game handled race.

It is a pretty touchy subject for a lot of people and it very common for video games to simply dodge the big question of how to properly address human diversity by making every in-game character different flavors of white. If you are lucky, you might see white women. Maybe a few token minorities. But white dudes are the classic video game protagonist across all platforms for a reason. They are easy.

Being born into an OHOL town for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised by how much diversity there was in the character models. We didn't all look alike. The village was a rich melting pot of skin-tones, hair-styles, genders, and ages. Everybody looked different and unique. It was pretty amazing, especially for an indie game with hand-drawn art assets.

Back then, you were not stuck in a monotone village with everyone in your family sharing a handful of faces. If your mom was brown, you might also be born as a brown baby, but your younger sister might be a shade lighter and be white-skinned, while your older brother is a deep mahogany black.

Gingers and blacks tended to be a little rare, while whites and browns were more common. All families were a hodgepodge of all possible skintones. There were no "races" in OHOL.

It was a simpler time.

...

Of course, the lack of racist design elements didn't prevent racist players from joining the game. The master/slave experience I described earlier happened in a mixed village a long time ago. I was the only black kid in the village and my racist aunt tried to "enslave" me as a fun bit of roleplay. As a black mom, I've also had to kill racists who called my black kids slaves or other horrible stuff. I don't tolerate that kind of shit in my presence.

I do not blame Jason for any of that. He wasn't encouraging or supporting their racist attitudes. If anything, the game design was reinforcing the idea that race and gender are surface details. They do not define the individual. Treating me differently because I was born a black woman is stupid. And that statement should be true whether I am talking about the real world or the game. I am the same person, either way.

Judge me for who I am, not what I look like.

...

The point where things started to go sideways from a game development perspective was when Jason decided to change how skin color inheritance worked to be more "realistic". Don't recall exactly when it happened, some time in late 2018 or early 2019, I think. After that update, a black Eve would only have black babies and a white Eve always has white babies. Instead of families being a blend of races, each family has a single skin tone. One family. One race.

This was a game changer, because now race and family were linked together. This didn't suddenly make the game racist by default, but it laid the ground work for future design choices by making the concept of "race" mean something real in OHOL. Up until that point, we were not grouped by skin color. All villages and families were mixed. After the change, many things were possible - like race wars and genocide. If you decided to "go to war" with a nearby village, you could tell people that you were going out to kill the gingers. If you saw a lone black man in a white village, you knew he didn't belong. His skin color marked him as an outsider. And after the biome restrictions update, your skin color was now a part of the game. It wasn't just racist subtext anymore. It was regular text.

Just to be clear, I don't think Jason made any of those changes for bad reasons. I don't think he intended to encourage people toward racist behavior. He made families share the same skin tone so that players could quickly identify "outsiders" in a village full of "family". He added biome restrictions to encourage trade. He added homelands to keep people from forming mixed race towns that defeated the purpose of biome restrictions. He was trying to make the game better, not more racist. That's what Jason was TRYING to achieve.

But ... racism is a part of OHOL now. Not just the racism we bring in as players. The game itself sees color. It treats you differently and communicates to its players that they should treat you differently depending on the color of your skin. What you can or cannot do. Where you can go. Who you can talk to. Whether or not you will be welcomed with open arms or with scorn.

The current design of this game reinforces prejudices based on race. It teaches you that what you can achieve is determined by how dark or light your skin is. That who you are matters less than what you look like. And that's not cool.
...

As silly as the old birth mechanics were, I miss them. I miss the bell towns. I miss raising babies alongside mothers from other families. I miss feeling proud of this game for treating human diversity with the grace and respect it deserves.

Gogo · 2020-09-26 13:16:29

Mixed families won't work with all these allies / gate / leader mechanics, when you want to spot outsider quickly.

Spoonwood wrote:

The player has something like TJ, JD, or DT by their family name or 'you' initially if the server has more than 14 players on it. They might say something like "I WANT TUNDRA" or "I WANT DESERT", and their profession lasts the rest of their life. If a player doesn't say one by say 55, they end up saying "I WANT "X"" automatically where "X" is one of the biomes in their list.

Unintuitive. Bad idea.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-09-25 16:15:40

Racists are harming their own race

#2 2020-09-25 16:57:18

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#3 2020-09-25 17:03:21

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#4 2020-09-25 17:31:16

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#5 2020-09-25 17:47:08

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#6 2020-09-25 17:56:57

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#7 2020-09-25 18:02:32

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#8 2020-09-25 18:06:01

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#9 2020-09-25 18:17:17

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#10 2020-09-25 18:20:54

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#11 2020-09-25 18:24:45

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#12 2020-09-25 18:27:34

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#13 2020-09-25 18:36:44

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#14 2020-09-25 19:29:33

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#15 2020-09-25 19:34:20

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#16 2020-09-25 19:44:12

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#17 2020-09-25 21:08:51

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#18 2020-09-25 21:26:35

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#19 2020-09-25 22:43:23

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#20 2020-09-25 22:58:55

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#21 2020-09-25 23:12:39

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#22 2020-09-25 23:53:25

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#23 2020-09-26 02:30:22

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#24 2020-09-26 06:11:07

Re: Racists are harming their own race

#25 2020-09-26 13:16:29

Re: Racists are harming their own race

Board footer