no, it is not beauty standards. they havent chosen to not have dark skinned characters to sell more. when the natlan teaser dropped, it wasn’t just overseas genshin fans that were upset. the “demographic”, a lot of chinese fans, were also upset! they most absolutely can make dark skinned characters, they’re a billion dollar company. if they can have lgbt characters, they can have diverse skin tones. a lot of people from all sides of the fandom would like darker skinned characters. a lot of characters actually look BETTER with dark skin. it’s not like asian people hate black people?? i’m chinese, i love melanin queens. they have 0 reason to not have dark skinned characters. other similar games like reverse 1999 has dark skinned characters (im pretty sure, i dont play it) and they’re doing fine. don’t blame it on the chinese fandom when it’s mihoyo’s fault.
@deco27worshipper I wasn't blaming it on the Chinese fandom. Sorry if I worded it like I was. I'm blaming Mihoyo. Mihoyo probably thinks they are not gonna sell well, not Chinese fans. I'm very aware that Chinese fans would have no issues with dark skinned characters, but Mihoyo probably thinks they will.
@@Reaper-Azurwrath Exactly. Companies make decisions based on what they think is the majority opinion of the market, regardless of how true their assumption is.
While Hoyo does have implied queer characters they treat queerness flippantly. At the end of the day, every adult character is playersexual on demand which I do not count as true representation but as marketability and fanservice. Which...okay, fair. It can be seen as both a positive and a negative, yet Hoyo is not the only company to have characters with undefined sexualities to please more players. And so, playable characters not having canon relationships within the game (either queer or straight), not having biological children, not having darker skin, etc., it all goes back to Hoyo wanting the characters to appeal to waifu/husbando collectors. I say this because their NPCs do have canon relationships, biological kids, and darker skin (even textured hair). So it's not a matter of Hoyo not wanting to include those things across the board. No. They just don't want to include it for playable characters because those are the "products" they sell to h*rny players.
@@Razor3000-u3f I think this is even worse because characters that were formerly very explicit in their queerness and very well written in regards to it (Mei ESPECIALLY comes to mind) have player-sexual expies. Even in hi3, Mei, Bronya, Seele and Yae are all very very explicitly queer- bronya and Seele kiss, mei is referred to as Kiana’s girlfriend more than once and they get married in pretty much every timeline but the main one, Yae and Kallen are in romantic love with one another. When Raiden Shogun and Yae Miko hit, they were made to come off as attracted to the player, which is kind of weird considering both were confirmed to be gay across every universe on more than one occasion. Same with HSR Seele, Bronya and Acheron. It really hurts to see tbh. It’s not like it wouldn’t sell either, because Hi3 basically confirmed everyone was a lesbian and still does very well in gacha sales.
something i find really offensive is people saying "china is racist thats why they dont have dark skinned characters" take a good gander at Reverse:1999, made by a Chinese company that has plenty of GOOD and WELL WRITTEN dark characters.
It's probably still true though. East asians generally ARE colourist/racist. It brings me no pleasure to say it either, it's just the more you learn about asia, the more you learn the less-good parts. They're even colourist/racist to other asians especially south east asians. Filipinos are considered lesser than Koreans, Japanese and Chinese to those nationalities. It's just a sad fact about asia. If you go to some places in asia as a pale white person, they will point out how pale you are as a compliment (especially older people). Even if a black person doesn't face outright overt racism, they'll get backhanded compliments like how they're attractive despite how dark their skin is. It can understand why people want to deny this when it's near impossible to not consume some Korean, Japanese or Chinese cultural product daily, obviously you don't want to feel bad about what you like, so it's easier to pretend it's just one company being problematic rather than a systemic issue, but it does no good to pretend these east asian cultures don't have any negative or uncomfortable aspects or problems just because we like what they make. The people at mihoyo both have a high chance of being colorist themselves, and are designing characters to appeal to the asian market first and foremost. If pale skin is what appeals to the asian market, if dark skin on characters is seen as a risk some designers or companies are willing to take here and there, and others aren't, what does that tell you? It's great that Reverse:1999 has those characters, but that's one game. Also, orientalist depictions are it's own problem. Notice that when they *do* make darker skin characters, they're very often a sexualized stereotype of an arab or indian (or mixing the two usually). This even applies to the character I'm seeing from Reverse:1999 just from looking it up. I see the game has a british empire/victorian era theme and oh, this dark skin woman who is clearly meant to be a desi woman in inspiration is sexualized and showing more skin than the others. Not what I'd call good representation exactly, and the vast majority of that game's cast are pale, so it's still following the norm. Now, a mistake people make is associating this solely with white people or wanting to be them. It's really got much more to due with centuries of their own cultures. Asians have skin that changes more drastically. The darker asians in society were the peasants that worked outside on the fields etc, and the paler people were the nobles, royalty, etc that stayed inside. That beauty standard has remained to this day. Characters being always made pale or even retconned to be paler sometimes (Tidus from ff10) is one consequence of this (a far worse one imo is the skin bleaching creams). There's also nothing you can realistically do about this. The reality is you, an outsider, can't change the cultural norms of the whole of east asia, which is the core root of the problem. So the options are to accept this problematic aspect of their culture and move on, or stop consuming games like Genshin that have this aspect that probably isn't going to change any time soon.
@@kit76149 I understand that there could be a possibility tbh because I am East Asian myself. But I guess I’m not so sure because my family has a darker skin tone. I don’t like accepting it because of the fact that people like my family are pretty rare and it’s kinda devastating that the skintone discrimination even happens inside of Asian culture. Also for your claims on Reverse1999 not having that good rep is sorta good. Like you mentioned Kaala Bauna showing a bit more skin then others, and also Centurion being somewhat sexualized, but it isn’t really limited to them. There are other characters in the game who also show a lot of skin and it’s mainly for marketing. That’s not a really good excuse and it shouldn’t be an excuse but they’re not trying to sexualize poc women only. I mainly like to talk about their big diversity in characters because, they really do have much more characters with different backgrounds. They don’t shy away from having a character speak their native language or incorporate different cultures into their game. While Genshin (and, to the extent, Hoyo) does this. They don’t necessarily expand on it to the extent that bluepoch does. I don’t really have better examples because I’m not that exposed to different games/media other then hoyo and bluepoch. I’m not trying to defend them at all, but I’m trying to insinuate that Bluepoch is like a small stepping stone for having more diversity in Chinese company games (either that or I have an extreme false hope) I can’t really say much else about your comment because yes a majority of it is true, because my ancestors weren’t of nobility, they had darker skin because of being in the working class. Also, your other points gave me more insight about the whole skintone thing, so thanks for that.
I can also vouch for Arknights, also a Chinese gacha game whose world is inspired by real countries. And while it's Japanese FGO also has an incredibly diverse cast. So yeah, this is just a hoyoverse thing, not an exclusively Asian thing.
light skin is associated with cleanliness / beauty in china. so they dont want to ruin reputation or revenue. as well as most of the highest sales come form china/japan.
the funniest part of this is that at least half(or more) of the npc characters are black/mixed etc. while all of the playable characters are pale af. If they can make most of the people in a nation black, then why can't they make black playable characters???
and alsoo cookie run kingdom have ALOT of diversity ranging from skintones and cultures and this coming from a korean company man 💀💀 Edit: ok so just for some correction in my part, Korea is def different than China in the whole fair skin culture thing, so I apologize for the misinformation
reverse 1999 is made by bluepoch, which is a chinese company too yet they have way more diversity. the characters even have accents in the game (most of the chars have accents in the english dub)
its not rlly an asian thing but specifically chinesse thing as far as im aware.the chinesse culture has weird opinion on dark skin like its dirtiness or something? idfk- thats why they rather want white characters, majority of chinesse playerbase also isnt intrested in many black characters... but clearly mihoyo doesnt care about npcs cuz those are half the time way blacker than the blackest playable characters... *also people from latin america come it diffrent colours, everyone not being black or dark skinned isnt innacurate*
@@iBleed_RoyLty4368 Jet black probably r*pist Churls are the represent we get im afraid. The only charater in a Hoyo game that is black is form HSR, metioned in this video.
Btw there is a character in honkai impact 3rd named Carole and they made her hate her skin colour (she’s dark skinned) so she bleached it or something and now she’s pale😭
Reverse 1999 is a great example of diversity. Not only they have POC like Indians to Latino but they have the characters speak their native language and that’s what I love about this game they have characters speaking Russian, Italian, mandarin, Japanese, like even Hexadecimal code(not a language but it’s cool) they also have two characters that are non-binary and one of them is intersex. The company behind Reverse 1999 is also a Chinese company like Hoyoverse. I’m just yapping at this point I just wanted to talk about a game made in Asia doing diversity well.
@@YourSecretAdmirrorhe's barely tan bro even some white ppl are darker than him 😭 even though ur technically right he's one out of like 60 pale ass characters
@@ashleyandanime4815 💀 I’m not going to china then but wait one of my relatives went to china and never was arrested for being black but that was 10 years ago so idk know
Also Reverse:1999 is a Chinese company and they have SOOOO many characters with dark skin, and there’s so many different cultures mixed into the game. The worst part is Reverse:1999 is also made by a Chinese company, just like Genshin. 😭
"Pizza hut has pizzas, so why does Mcdonalds not have pizzas even though both are American companies? Therefore, Mcdonalds must be racist to Italians since they are an American company like Pizza Hut, but they don't sell pizzas."
me pasa!!! la verdad me encanta mualani y en mi mente, su tribu se asemeja un poco a la cultura peruana costaña (es todo referente a hawaii pero me generó tanto aprecio que es como mi hc jajsjs)
@@gumicidio He visto amigos decir que las tribus de natlan se asemejan a muchos lugares xD algunos hasta me dijeron las islas pascuas, almenos todos ven un poquito de su cultura esparcida por toda la region uwu
@@ittybittyshinystar And that's what we really should care for. The culture and it's peoples ain't their skin color, but everything that actually makes this culture, for example their food, dance, habits, etc.
Hoyo literally started as a fanservice company for men. They openly stated that they wanted to make anime girls for fellow otakus. And yeah, looks matter when you're selling waifus and husbandos. That's definitely the reason why Hoyo is scared shitless to make an unappealing character. And although they do make global games they still take into consideration mostly Asian players, CN specifically. Is it because of a sense of loyalty? Is it because most of the revenue comes from Asia? Is it...fear? Because when CN kicks up a storm the CN government is more likely to notice and breathe down their necks which is not the case with the rest of the world. Honestly? I have no idea. But beauty standards are the root cause of this (because of the nature of the game).
@@luvz4laylawoah, really? I'm so used to the low-key high-key racism from the eng/NA side with all the "wait for natlan" and "it's fantasy" and "darker skin will ruin them", are they genuinely upset as well? If so...I really hope they are. At the very least hoyo can frame it as "making dark skinned anime waifus for the other degens we haven't appealed to yet".
@Vesperad0 yeah! I actually saw quite a lot of CN players commenting about this on Twitter and other Chinese apps! This shocked me too ngl but looks like even they see how stupid Hoyo's actions are (which is great)
the thing is asians (im speaking from a korean perspective) usually don’t have super pale skin 😭 it’s just that pale skin is a beauty standard because it means that you’re rich and korea used to be a very poor, working in the fields country.
Also, something that Hoyoverse is burdened with is making characters with a dark skin tone: have a bad skill set (like Xinyan, Dehya, Candace or Arlan), and if it's a promotional five-star(like Cyno): need a LOT of investment to be make it do decent damage. The only dark-skinned character who is considered good, even exceeding some 5 stars, is Kaeya.
with how amazingly genshin manages to represent cultures through it's music and in game locations, i don't believe that the skintone issue is a matter of cultural representation and really just a racial one. Not that that's any better, but it just really annoys me when people say that genshin isn't or is bad at representing all of these diverse cultures when it's completely untrue. Most of the people saying Natlan's representation is bad aren't even from Africa or South America (I'm from the latter) and so they can't understand how just the music and environment are such an important aspect, even more so than the skintones. Unfortunately, genshin's lack of black characters is likely almost entirely due to china's beauty standards and blatant colourism, and as a game company, they have to create products that sell. If you create black characters, they'll sell in the west but very badly in the east. If you create pale characters, they'll sell very well in both demographics. For that reason, i'm very content with the actual effort hoyo has put into representing all of these nations culturally. Dumbing down entire cultures just to skin colour is stupid and is an extreme form of disrespect. TLDR: Genshin is phenomenal at representing cultural diversity, horrible at representing racial diversity. Culture is not dependent on race, and it's disrespectful to say it is. Regardless, it still sucks that china's colourism robs us from darker skinned characters.
Tbh yeah I do wish they'd make more dark color skin characters, not only for inclusion but some designs just look really pretty with it. It's a bit off topic kinda? I understand the conflict of the conversation and agree with your points btw. It's like drawing lighter or beautiful colors on a darker base, it makes the colors pop really nice on some designs. Not that a dark canvas can't work with dark colors ofc but it just looks so pretty on some character designs imo.
YES TOTALLY!!! im a beginner with drawing, coloring and stuff but one friend of mine is going to art school and told me about how gorgeous and difficult is to resemble the irl black skin because of the shadows and many combinations to make it look like in real life. i always love when people draw black characters with purple, blue or golden pallets like candace or cyno fanarts...hyv has such an amazing art style and the aanimation and creative team behind are good when they take the irl references to make a character with the genshin detail...its sad that even if the team procceds with a dark skin character, the final decision would be to white washing it...
It's also unusual how with their new music track in Natlan, there were clearly darker skinned people in the choir and among the people playing the intruments (if I remember correctly)- so if they have voice actors and people in the music department that are poc then why not in game? let me know if I said anything wrong or false information because my memory is bad and I don't wish to offend anyone
Hoyoverse doesn’t really listen to the Chinese audience either. The most used characters for Chinese players are Dehya, Kaeya, and Xinyan. Along with the very few “dark skinned” characters. During the release of Natlan’s trailer, Chinese players were also pretty angry at the company for whitewashing many of the characters. So it’s really not because of beauty standards but more of hoyoverse being a company full of racist people.
so im korean, and i can say that, uhm, southeastern asia is slightly racist, im not tryong to insult asia but uh, asia is lowk racist, especially china since its a communist country. so LBGTQIA+++ and darker complexions are controversial there, so hoyoverse is more so trying to please their government more than anything.
Correction for the begining of the vid, not ALL those Pokemon characters shown are "Black". Melanin does not equal black. There's Indian, Spanish, and Polynesian in the mix depicted as well. Also, not every dark skined anime character is black either. There are Tan Asians too. I'm just sayin' is all
I just find it weird how people use the excuse that it’s a Chinese company?… Or “it’s jUst a gAMe” like do you hear urself? A game with all this culture but not the people? Like YES WE GET IT THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE LIGHT IN THESE COUNTRY’S BUT ARE U JUST GOING TO IGNORE ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARENT LIGHT? ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARE BLACK? JUST IGNORE THESE PEOPLE? AND THEN USE THE SAME EXCUSE EVER SINGLE FK TIME? It’s so infuriating how people tryna talk as if they knew shit…
Fr though… they NEED to step up their game and actually give us some dark skinned characters. Like I get they are a Chinese company but it’s a GLOBAL game. There isn’t any excuse for this
I read that since it's a Chinese company, they do things based on what the Chinese players say.. Since a lot of money comes from China players. Annndd Chinese people are mostly light skinned, So we probably won't see dark skinned people unless Chinese players want it.
Thisss Like, ofc there's people with lighter skintones in latinoamerica (I'm one actually, a part of my family has lighter skin) but not everyone is of the same skintone Just in my city I've seen people of almost ALL types of skintones It's not an excuse, if you're using cultures for your characters, then represent them respectfully! Hoyoverse it's just quite incompetent in that regard honestly, I've not been in the chinese or japanese community for genshin so I can't say if they have strong opinions about this, but it's still pretty shitty that they just won't give melanin to their characters lol
@@MoonRenMMD fr what makes me more sad is it’s not even asking for much it’s just asking to make one black character or maybe 2 and see how the community react to this and they can see how much people truly want these characters they act like nobody wants black characters but it’s the complete opposite of that what makes it so stupid…😩
As much as I hate to say this I'm chinese and I know that MOST (MOST MOST MOST MOST) Chinese game (or media in general) producers don't give two flying shits about race representation, mainly because it just doesn't appear as a problem to the Chinese audience. Most complaints about rep are from western parts of the fandom. I never rlly liked Mihoyo as a company because they cater towards the male otaku audience way too much...I don't think a lot of female chinese genshin players would mind a dark-skinned character but the ppl who pay them the most want white girls with black stockings and minimum clothing, while dark-skinned characters are just an occasional f*tish to them. Sigh.
Omg your so bas'ed oh wow, but seriously ive seen too many comments saying that "I'm Chinese and i love my self some melanin" when the facts are if your in china right right now you in the chinese world and the way you think is too that place same applys anywere, just because Reverse: 1999 is chinese and does good representation don't mean shit. The exceptions proves the rule.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo Most likely it was about dislyte and people bringing up these 2 games that are small companies , One game didn't even launch in china (Dislyte ) and was unpopular . . and only manage to find revenue by pandering t o chinese furry whales . the other game people mention are all niche titles that cost a fraction of a fraction to make compared to mihoyo games
For a game that sells characters on sex appeal they sure are missing a huge demographic. ...outside of just fetishizers of course. But damn give Kinich some color
Also Natlan is also based on West Africa (eg. Yoruba singers and drums in their music, the character olorun) so it just makes it even worse to know that no african inspired characters will be in it And plenty of Chinese companies have made dark characters. Dislyte, Reverse 1999 and Mobile legends to name a few. Its just that Hoyo is infested with colorists in their HQ who can't stand the thought of melanin entering their game that they made the sky and UV rays from the sun fake lol
"Pizza hut has pizzas, so why does Mcdonalds not have pizzas even though both are American companies? Therefore, Mcdonalds must be racist to Italians since they are an American company like Pizza Hut, but they don't sell pizzas." Brilliant logic you have here.
@@Tharros95 thats the saddest logic I've ever seen. My point is to refute the fact that Hoyo isn't able to make dark characters cos they are a Chinese company and that its just them voluntarily excluding dark characters. And your argument is agreeing with me that Hoyo is voluntarily doing that? Cool lol Admitting that a billion dollar company is stealing cultural aesthetics and being okay with it isn't the flex that you think it is. They will not pick you for disagreeing with the fact that colorism is colorism. Let's not be in denial here
@@crewmatewillthrowthesehand7600 Didn't know you were stupid enough to think that Mihoyo would lack the capability to make dark characters. It's literally just changing hexcodes. Mihoyo doesn't owe you shit. All cultures are open to be reinterpreted as fictional works, with no obligation to have any specific skin colors. Don't like it? Then don't play. You guys are the smallest player demographic, but the loudest and most whiny.
@@Tharros95I dont think ppl should expect mihoyo to have darker characters but think of it as a chance to satisify their players that would dig into their wallets for a darker chara or bring excitement to them as western fans, a better experience if you shall. As an open world game with multiple regions, it does seem expected to have a character darker than a light tan in places like a desert, or region inspired by african culture bc duh? For example, id see it unreasonable everyone is dark in a region inspired by france, or everyone is indian in germany. Even for a work of fiction somehow its just really not immersive to have everyone pale snow to a tan in places you wouldn’t expect it. Thats me though, I think the game could improve there
@@Mem0447 Making dark characters to satisfy western players would come at a cost of not satisfying JP, SK, RU, TW and CN players. You think Mihoyo would piss these markets off just to satisfy westerners that don't spend even a fraction of these markets? Why should Mihoyo satisfy people who contribute the smallest financially to the franchise?
As an latin American i feel kinda offended by the skin color and hair,because on the south America hair are normally curly or wavy and here the skin commonly is a dark tan or a light tan and the tradicional dressing here is normally associated with a religion the Umbanda,i think Mihoyo should really study the cultures,like the religion the continent is associated with like Brasil native religion is umbanda that is a Afro-Brazillian religion,and i think they should study more the animals and it would be very cool if Mihoyo add an Afro-brazillian martial art the Capoeira and the instruments like the berimbau,the pandeiro the agogo,the atabaque,and even some of the latin America other NATIVE religions and REAL culture and native cooking(i am Brazillian btw,and sorry for mistakes i am not too good in english.)
@@SukunaYaoi Omg! I freaking love dislyte!! Yeah, but anyways, it is sad that genshin is taking inspiration from cultures but not representing diversity in their game
something I think its hilarious when you started talking about Asian companies that make a lot of representation was DevSisters. a Korean company that made the entery cookie run saga, and were able to do a better job then Hoyoverse and THEYRE CHARACTERS AREN'T EVEN HUMAN, THE'RE FRICKING COOKIES
Well actually I’m pretty sure Hoyoverse only cares about giving cultural representation and not diversity. The clothes are all based off actual cultures references (aside from Nahida since she was based off a pale white fairy). Plus because they’ve broken CCP rules before the CCP will be watching over them and they don’t allow black skinned characters. Also everyone is semi-racist in some way, I know everybody will be like “I want dark skinned characters! I will pull for them!” But it will obviously take your brain some time to register it. Dark skinned characters can absolutely slay but at first glance your brain might resort to something else. Not saying Hoyoverse is justified for not making dark skinned characters I just think people are skipping over the details.
I would just like to mention that arabs are primarily white, so the sumeru argument didnt make much sense. People just think ‘near africa = black’ but really only sub-saharan africa is majority black, while the sahara region has people with a lighter skin tone. I 100% agree that they should black characters, I’m black myself, but I just thought I should mention that because somehow no one in the genshin community realizes that.
I, also, would like to add that colonization happened outside of the americas as well. While I'm not super educated on it (thanks US school system you really struck gold), it's not hard to see that the lighter skin in those regions is a newer occurrence. Just like, say, ancient Greece, there was a variety of people with differing skin tones. However most of the ancient Greeks were light to olive skinned, and the same but opposite is likely the case in the middle east. The land's proximity to Europe and Asia and Africa aided in their skin, alongside trade and culture and the like. So while there may have been lighter skinned people in the general middle/near east, they definitely weren't the majority. Religious groups also probably had something to do with it, like Christianity and Islam "fighting" for those regions through conquests and enslavement. Not necessarily like america and west africa's enslavement based on appearance/race, but forced labor nonetheless.
Ok. I genuinely need to get this off my chest. Hoyo IS colorist, I am NOT defending them, but this is getting ridiculous. 1. Not enough poc characters bc Hoyo's main audience (Chinese) dislikes dark skin and has the power to lower their profits by boycotting their banners or reporting them to the ccp, (as proved by their responses towards the boycott in the west and Neuvillete's nerf) which in turn lessens their funds for their games. Unfortunately America's whales are NOTHING compared to the money made from Asian whales like Japan and China. 2. All dark skin characters, even the ones with bad kits are getting buffed by recent patches, especially with the release of Natlan. Maybe they're stille niche yes, but they're undeniably not ignored. And also Cyno isn't bad. Mid, but not bad. Not meta and dependent, but other 5 stars have flaws too. Some are worse and some are better. 3. Names are just names. The characters are not representing the black deities, js like how the archons are not representing the demons as how they are named. This is probably the most flimsy argument tbh. 4. Natlan is based off of the countries by the Ring of Fire, so there are bound to be wider ranges of skin tones. Too pale? Perhaps, yes. But you can't say that characters aren't dark enough or gray, bc that is js insulting. I can't believe y'all say Iansan is gray when people have different undertones. Like ok you complain abt diversity when you also complain about DIVERSITY with actual poc characters. It's not like they look like a literal cement block. (Also Arlan's talent names? Y'all gotta be so dirty minded to think "Shackle breaker" and "Swift harvest" are racist. It's as generic and "epic" as most talent names are. Imagine if Nahida is black, y'all would complain about her getting locked up bc of the sages' prejudice. But you know that's not the point of her character don't you? Because the point is is that y'all be nit-picking details of a character and call it racist.) 5. All enemies are black? Yh bc they are in Natlan, and even then most poc npcs are pretty chill, and the playable characters are not written in a problematic way. (Pacal, Cyno, Candance, Xinyan etc) Btw, even if some of them are villains doesnt mean their skin tones are tied into that. Anyone can be a villain. Skin tones aren't their whole character y'all. 6. Remember the Natlan Symphony? They hired POC singers y'all. Real people. Yes while diversity in the game is nice too, we can't deny that the fact they are willing to hire poc people are some form of evidence that they care more about the money made from their banners and characters specifically. Their representation of the cultures are still nuanced and considerate, not accurate, but it's not like they're malicious about it anyway. I understand people's concerns about the lack of diversity, but sometimes you gotta acknowledge the circumstances Hoyo is in. It isnt all white and black, there are gray areas in this controversy too. And it's looking pretty gray, except the characters y'all are supposedly complaining about. Again, Hoyo is doing business, not charity. Their mainland is first priotity.
Also abt the other chinese games with more rep -- are they as popular as Hoyo games? Are they as large scale as Hoyo games? Obviously to keep developing their big ass games they need to keep a stable income, and their main source of that is the gacha. Unlike nintendo and others, they are funded by the gacha system. Also, devsis is becomimg more and more greedier recently, so there's that I guess.
Also ironically, Lilith Games is based in the same city as Hoyo and their game Dyslite has so much POC characters based off of mythology that I was surprised when I saw some of the character designs
@@lienhua5558 Like most bad internet argument lilth game is like the worse possible argument Lilth games isn't some well known company in China , No one heard of them there a niche company and there games are inexpensive to make , and they focus most of there games on the North American market . They focus on a niche because there games are cheaper to make and the fanbase is smaller . dislyte isn't some super successful game in china lol. it's revenue is a drop in the bucket compared to genshin
I don’t think these designs deserve that much hate, as a person of color myself (half south eastern and also living in Paraguay South America), i understand if people want their characters to be darker, but let me be honest here, some of the Fan redesigns are pretty bad, they get far too overboard with skin shading that they look more like afro than actual Native American or Polynesian. Many of the slight tanned characters (Xilonen, iansan, moalani & kachina) aren’t even that bad or that off from actual indigenous people. Yet people still want them darker. I can still at least tell their indigenous At a glance even with the slight tan.
those game comparisons are unrelated because china is not japan, and unfortunately china is really really racist, not ifs and buts about it. just take into consideration that they had to edit the black panther and star wars movie posters in china removing the dark skinned people. just because japan is really progressive does not mean the same applies to china.
ya, they so racist that minority has added score in exam and exempted from 1 child policy, they so racist they want to provide proper education to muslim. should have learn the american way and physically send them to heaven. or follow Japans' lead, like how they almost entirely remake the culture heritage of Ryukyuan island's people, whose now cant speak their own language and even lost their own name and call okinawa. Even though Ryukyuan island chain is not under japan's sovereignty.
What makes it worse is the enemies you fight in certain areas are dark skinned so they're basically saying "oh hey look we have dark skinned characters, they're just all murderous villains.." Like no Hoyo just no, that's not what we're asking for D;
Literally the only npc we have meet that is like actually dark and has great writing is Jeht. That and Xinyan is the closest to a bkack person or even a slightly darker skin colour the game has made and Xinyan' kit is shit. The other 'tan' characters could be called southern European and it would make sense.
But the thing is that even light skin people aren’t even that white. I’ve never seen an actual WHITE person in real life. Like paper white. I’m Dehya color in the summer and Candace color in the winter. Also characters like Amber, Kuki Shinobu, and stuff, even if they’re pale, they go outside all the time and should be at least a little tan. Or at least have some color in them and not be paper color. And I’m CHINESE.
I don't think the issue is that mihoyo doesn't add darker skinned characters in their games its that their chinese community and by an extent the CCP have potential opposition to doing it, and this is because genshin is heavily ccp approved in order to push this strong appearance for china, you can see some of it in hsr too. So either they're going to ease into it or something else.
I dont know why they are so scared every one loves Dehya. The problem is her kit is trash, but everyone loves her regardless . Mihoyo should just make a character like dehya and make them good
Fun fact: Too much sun can permanently, and unnaturally darken your skin, giving you dark spots and leathery skin. Xinyan is as country bumpkin Chinese as you’ll ever get but her story is so damn Black coded. I’m surprised they didn’t do the same for Deyha considering she just looks like a grown up Xinyan. “Sand grains” used as referring to the Eremites is still one of the only phrases that made me literally, and quite dramatically, gasp to this DAY.
@@KMTepi Sand grains are what the Aranara (mainly Aranakin) calls the Eremites, quite exclusively. Considering the slurs people called real life people that were born in desert regions (one being “sand n*****), many thought it was a weird call. Many jokes are made about it though, such as (to explain the most overused one, as they’re mostly Star Wars references) Aranakin’s name being just two letters away from Anankin, who had some issues with the Tusken Raiders in the story.
@@anapple6912 I mean, you shouldn’t try to make it sound like you knew, if you didn’t. Many people have already spoken about the “sand grains = sand n*****” context. In fact, it was a long time ago in many forums and they (Hoyo) didn’t make it subtle. I thought it was just the average racist fanbase joke until I played through the region myself. They didn’t hide it, they just made non-humans say the quiet part out loud for them.
honestly, while the rep is definitely disappointing, it’s already doing better than sumeru did, so that’s.. something ig. personally I’m not a fan of changing the skin tone of pre-existing characters, but I definitely think hoyo should have started with them darker. in cases like this, where a character is based off a culture that they’re looks don’t represent.. I can definitely see why people might draw them darker though. I’ll be completely honest even I would make the skin tones a tiny bit darker, not exactly noticeable but yeah. I was drawing kaveh and alhaitham once and I colourdropped official art and I could barely see the skin against the white background- I compared it to the colour I use for white characters and the difference was crazy. sumeru characters aren’t even just whale they’re fucking paper. some pics of nahida look like her skin is GLOWING. it’s honestly crazy how all the darkest characters came out early game (kaeya, xinyan, and iansan was shown in a trailer years ago so counts more as being an early game design compared to new characters)
Honestly as a Turkish person i dont think sumeru is that bad Characters on Sumeru city can be white cuz they dont need to spend time in the sun a lot but in the sumeru dessert they should be tan like we saw on Dehya, Cyno etc. Honestly i never saw a black person on my country (can be different on other countrys) but thats America they should be at least 1 black person right? In the end color doesnt matter yall pull anyway
Its not even about the color anymore, its straight up cultural appropriation. Why base, and yes, BASE a nation off of racially diverse cultures if you knew you couldn't represent the people? It was an idiotic move tbh. And because i know I'll probably have someone argue this, ill just explain here. Lets say i was inspired by..demon slayer to make my own anime. It would be based in..idk america, and it would be gunslingers hunting..idfk skincrawlers. They all work for a big organization and they each have unique guns that suit them and a style in which they use them. See? You could obviously point out similarities, but it is its own thing. Other than rearranging letters in a name, what did mihoyo change about the cultures they stole from? Nothing really. Nothing at all.
i'm sorry if this seems rude, but are you from Africa or South America? do you really understand how important musical and cultural representation are for us? because genshin has definitely excelled in those two categories. The company is blatantly colourist, i'm not arguing against nor defending that, but saying that these cultures are being "appropriated" just because of the character's skintones disregards the sheer amount representation hoyoverse has given us. Please don't dumb down entire countries and cultures just to our skintones, it's completely disrespectful.
@zannulti Do you understand what Mihoyo is doing? This is basically the sum of it all, "We like the culture you made, but we don't like you." That is it. Mihoyo is taking people's culture and not representing the people who worked hard to make that culture. Take a look at Chasca. Her name is Andean, and she is dressed like a cowboy who slaughtered Andeans. Is that good representation? Guess what, that isn't about skintone and no, that isn't good rep. You like our stuff, but don't like us is disrespectful.
Natlan is a fictional country in a fictional world, no real life tribe worshipped the archons, faught the abyss or lived together with Saurians as Pokemon. You are okay with them changing the religion, the history, the landscape, the natural animals and plants. You don't care about all of those things being changed from the culture its inspired by because you understand its a fictional world and fictional nation in a fictional universe but the skin tone you have a issue with? Is skin collor all that culture is and not all the other things you clearly don't mind them changing? Its the exact same thing, Natlan is not meant to represent anything or anyone irl, its a fictional place with its own history, races, geography and species.
@FallenPhoenix-ml5mn can brown and black people not exist in a fictional world? All things fictional can be traced to real world things. This is a fantasy game, and they should have kept it fantastical. They brag about how much research and time and effort they put into looking up cultures, only to never represent the people. The yoruba, my people, are rarely ever represented, and hoyo decides to use Olorun as "Inspiration" for ororon, who people are now calling Olorun and even try to correct *me* when I tell them that they're wrong. The issue I have is that when things are misrepresented constantly, the thing represented will fade and the misrepresented form will be the representation. I'm not fine with ANYTHING in natlan, but because I like the game, I'm calling them out on the things they did. But people won't ever understand unless they were put in the position. So if your opinion differs from mine, that's fine, and I won't try and change it, but with that being said, I won't change my opinion as well, and tha opinion is that mihoyo is a colorist company that either won't or can't take criticism because of the fans that defend their every bad decision.
I don’t condone black or whitewashing or forced diversity but I’m saying Genshin Impact literally is surrounded by mixed cultures like East Asia Europe South East Asia etc and soon lower parts of Africa and South Asia, that would be a good time to continue what they do and add characters that have traits of their ethnicity. I’m not sure what they were thinking for Sumeru…
hi, please refer from using the term “blackwashing” because it’s not an actual word . It was made on twitter by racists who tried countering the argument of whitewashing w this!! Instead use racebending bc it’s less harmful, ty x
@@bluessyz it is real though. if you change people who are not supposed to be black to black you are disrespecting tne original racial identity of the character just like how whitewashing disrespects dark skin. Let me ask you then, why do people hate the Cleopatra documentary? It got so heated that Egyptians, who are supposedly the representation in the documentary. got mad that a lawyer who works with the cultural consultants from Egypt critisized Netflix and sued it for blackwashing the history.
Whitewashing has actual history and records of racism towards people of color not even just black people tied to it and has been dated back to hundreds of years ago. “Blackwashing” was never a thing till a few years ago when the argument of representation came along with racist white men who wanted to spread the word saying “have a taste of your own medicine”. Racebending has always been the word people use. If Blackwashing is real then we might as well make brownwashing and asianwashing” real by your logic.
@@bluessyz you guys just gonna make excuse for turning white characters black don't you. I am brown and I find it ridiculous some of you defend turning white characters into black ones and say skintone does not matter. but when someone draws Nessa or Xinyan slightly whiter, you guys cry whitewashing.
@@bluessyz It is not just white people who are the only ones hating blackwashing. Many other people also do because it is lazy performative activism to "represent" black skin and double standard when you also want to condemn white to black skin change. If you suddenly turn someone like Zeus into a black person do you think black people get represented? many artists on twitter do the black edit and defend it saying skin color is not important if the characters are white, studios even raceswap and let real black actors play white roles.
What's frustrating is that they did dark-skinned characters before with Kaeya and Xinyan, and Iansan, from what I heard, was featured in an early trailer, but then they stopped for some reason. Also Natlan characters look weird. I'm still convinced they were darker originally, but then Hoyo changed them. Like the Archon looks alright, but the talked about trio just looks off with the current skin tones.
EVEN SOME OF THE ASIAN COMMUNITY (china, japan, korea, ect) AGREES THAT HOYO SHOULD HAVE DARK SKIN REP IN PLACES THAT ARE BASED OFF OF PLACES WITH DARK SKINNED PPL😭😭😭😭😭
Yea but Not all, and hoyo fears asian ppl don't wanna spend Money on darker Charachters, bc neither an european country nor the USA is under the top 15 playerbases. Hoyo sees darker Skins as a gamble, and ironicly doesnt want to gamble.
1. Mualani, despite what her name may suggest, is Latina-coded. Hoyo has a habit of taking random, "exotic" sounding words from cultures vaguely related to the place their regions are based on and slapping them into characters, declaring them to be their name. Take a look at the many, MANY characters with food and drink names, especially in Sumeru and Fontaine. Her name is not an indication of anything, especially since Natlan is explicitly based on Latin and Hispanic cultures. More than likely, Hoyo just looked up names vaguely related to South America, saw "Mualani", and gave it to their character. 2. There are black Hawaiians. 3. A lot of Hawaiians have darker skin than Mualani, so making her darker isn't erasing any "Hawaiian" representation. 4. Looking at edits of the characters with darker skin, it's clear, based on the rest of their coloration (i.e. their clothes), that they were originally designed with darker skin in mind. Hoyo simply whitewashed them because white skin is considered "clean" and "pure" by racist Chinese beauty standards, and they want to appeal to their largest spenders, aka Chinese players.
@@marysmile1603 1st point still doesnt really stand. Just because a character is "(insert race here) coded" doesnt mean they're that race :/ (take the many black coded anime characters with skin white enough to reflect the sun, for example). Plus, a lot of latinas have her exact skintone. In fact i'd say shes pretty on par with most latinas i have met in person
@@shampeije7997 Even so, I've seen a lot of Latinas complain that the only type of representation they get, both in their own cultures' media and in others, is of the light-skinned variety. I'm not saying EVERY Latin character has to have dark skin, but it'd be nice to see something beyond 'vaguely tan'. Encanto, for example, did this concept amazingly, having a huge variety of skin tones among the Madrigal family and even covering every hair type as well. If Disney can do it, so can Hoyoverse. They just don't want to cause they're pandering to a single audience that has been conditioned to believe that "pale skin = good and clean" and "dark skin = bad and dirty".
Most natlan characters would fit in with the people of the culture they're representing with their name besides Citlali, Chasca (idk why she looks like Spanish conquistador) and Ororon (while obviously having darker skin than the majority of the genshin roster he wouldn't not fit in with the people his name is meant to represent)
while mualani does have a skin tone like us i don't think someone who spends a lot of time outside as a guide and watersports shop owner would be that pale brah 💀💀💀 but i think she's like relatively fine overall
Money. That's it. There's no any more profound or secretive racial reasons or something like that. It all comes down to money. They make what they know will surelly sell instead of gambling on something that could go really well or really bad. They're a company goddamitt.
Let's dig slightly deeper than the surface and explore what exactly would cause darker skin inclusion to be seen as a "gamble" or something that could go "really bad"... Additionally, other East Asian companies/games have little problem including darker skinned characters in their works, and people even in those places accept it. She mentions some in her video above, then you can look to others like Dislyte which is also from China and has TONS of brown and black characters. Then you learn that in Arknights the character Thorns, who is black, is apparently beloved in these places. And so on. I think there's more to the story than "oh it's simply not profitable." HoYo just seems weirdly reluctant to make "too many" prominent brown/black characters, and make them *strong* to boot, like a Kazuha or Hu Tao or Furina.
@@nicelight7794 Honestly the "Toxic Beauty Standard Discourse" is beyond me, I suppose I'm way to stupid to completely grasp everything that entails or I'm simply too indeferent to actually care, either way, "Helps a lot he who doesn't get in the way" as they say in my homeland... or something like that. At the end of the day the only thing I know for certain is that the final decisions are made by the suit guys at the top, after all they are who provide the funds and all of that, so if they see something as not profitable they will simply not accept it.
imo i agree sm with the need for more skin representation but i think that some people are getting a bit TOO pressed over this, you get what i mean? im latina myself and i honestly think its dumb seeing angry people on twitter because the natlan characters lack melanin, but YEAH IM SORRY IF THIS WAS WORDED HORRIBLY IDK HOW TO SAY IT BUT I AGREE WITH YOU
All I see is 20% of people being right and actually hating and disappointed that characters don't have melanin even tho the region they live on is based of people with varieties of skin tones Then there's the 80% here dunking on Genshin just cus they wanna ride the hate train I'm not here to defend hoyo but damn the haters be plaguing the comment sections of these criticism videos Saw one guy say Mualani is so sexualized with big chest and limbs but all I see is normal proportion body and her chest and back is normal for a girl of her body type Ohh boy they haven't seen other gachas with insanely unrealistic body proportions Genshin is very tame with those fanservice and body proportions than other CN or any other Gacha games man Have you seen wuthering waves or Honkai Impact, the chests have their own orbit and jiggle like it's made of jelly Please stay on topic of them being colourist not sexualization when it's one of the tamest out of most anime gachas
IMO: Genshin has always had a problem when it came to trying to represent cultures without actually representing them. When you look location-wise, the buildings, structures, and scenic views are very depicted and detailed just like how these views are seen in real life. Germany's houses really do look similar to Mondstat's, ancient houses of Japan do look similar to Inazuma. (I visited Japan a year ago and only spent around two to three days in Kyoto so I don't know if that's totally true). I think I started to notice the misrepresentation in Inazuma. A lot of characters who wore traditional outfits, mainly didn't follow with what traditional outfits of Japan looked like. For example, Yae Miko's outfit looking different that a shrine maiden's outfit or Raiden's outfit looking different from a yukata. Another thing I noticed with Ayato is that his love for boba (which was invented in Taiwan) when boba was really only popularized in Japan during the 90s. If Inazuma was really based off the Edo period Japan, then I don't think boba should be such a huge part of his character. By the time Sumeru came out, a lot of my South Asian friends quit Genshin for good because they told me that they were excited to see their culture represented in a better way. They were extremely disappointed to see most of the characters having light skin and were even more disappointed when people decided to defend it by saying "There are light skinned people in MENA (Middle East North Africa)" While there may be some light skinned people of these nations, majority of the people that live in South Asia have relatively dark skin. I feel similarly towards Natlan because I am Mexican myself. While there are light skinned people in Mexico (as my dad always explained to me when I was young, "There are all kinds of Mexicans, some that are even blonde and have blue eyes"), it also still isn't the majority of Central and South Americans who do have light skin. I still think that the idea of people trying to "boycott" Genshin is completely ridiculous however. Genshin is known to not really fix things like the weapon banner being completely unfair compared to HSR, the rewards system not being rewarding enough, and endgame (I know about imaginarium theatre but it was just recently announced, very late in the game). There's nothing that we could really do about the character's skin color at the moment. Once Mihoyo has chosen something for the game, it is set in stone. All we really can do it just sit disappointed.
"The characters, events, and locations depicted in this game are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This game does not aim to represent or depict any real-world groups, cultures, or beliefs. All content is created for entertainment purposes only." -mihoyo customer service xD it not a problem it by design .
Genshin was created in a Chinese studio,in china the beauty standard is to be very pale and in a lot of eastern asian countries the beauty is pretty strict. For them darker skins are seen as "unattractive"
Project moon, for all their faults, still does a pretty good job at representing darker skinned characters in their games despite being a Korean company, so The arguments claiming that it's because Hoyo is an 'Asian company' are pretty lame.
why list only those developers? "asian" is a broad term so let's also shed light on other East Asian companies that bothered with its darker PoC characters: 1. Guilty Gear from 1998, made by Arc System Works has multiple brown and black characters (including recolors too) that are gen SO attractive- 2. Street Fighter by Capcom has characters from many brown countries like Brazil, Spain, India, Turkiye, Kenya, Egypt, Jamaica, and recently that new girl kimberly who's African American, all under a Japanese company 3. Splatoon by Nintendo. Marina has full on melanin on her she prolly sucked pearl dry to albinism lmao and Frye, a squid inspired by indian culture is *darker* than the whole Sumeru cast that's also (partly but still validly) inspired by it 🤦🏽♀️ 4. Cookie Run by Devsisters, based in South Korea. despite being literally cookies, they not only had many, many skin ranges but diversity in body types too?? Genshin! take notes‼️‼️‼️ 5. pokemon, also Nintendo - self explanatory bc there's variety of trainers that aren't just typically pale white like Nessa and Ryme and even their world isn't earth like Teyvat is so like... 6. IDENTITY V. OGs will remember~ one of the survivors, Enchantress, is very explicitly a black woman of Haitian ancestry. yes she's a ragdoll, but she isn't by any means lightwashed to conform to the beauty standards tho. plus, the designers really don't hold back especially on skins so there's more diversity in them too. (side note; the fact that there's many skins unlike in genshin like what is stopping u, a corporation to limit so much compared to a smaller dev team?) 7. prolly more out there that are either ones i gen dont know or highly underrated ones. still, the fact that these popular game companies had defied these standards multiple times and are loved by its community... it has literally thrown that lame excuse out the window period and I'm a darker asian 💀 edit: i didn't bother to watch the whole vid bc i assumed they'll bootlick hoyo like so many channels do to get views and she has addressed half of the stuff above :') aight lemme just- *dies in embarassment*
@@Janal_Hoe When you said Street Fighter I also got reminded of Tekken from Bandai Namco (Again, a Japanese company) who also have their characters come from different countries/speak different languages, such as Leroy, a black american, and Eddy whose Brazilian. Also speaking of darker asian, I'm Korean American and I'm tanned jut from living in California, it's not like Asian people are immune to tanning or something so at the very least they could put more tanned characters in those Asian inspired regions if making POC's for the mostly POC region is that hard for them
its a COOKIE GAME. there are brown cookies, black cookies, pink cookies, red cookies ect. that wouldnt make sense if your saying that they have better representation because they are COOKIES. theres thousands of different cookies
I think that you misunderstood, cookie run has kingdoms based on REAL places, the pure vanilla kingdom based on Germany, the golden cheese kingdom based on ancient Egypt, the mala sauce tribe based on Aztec civilizations. Cookie run is surprisingly diverse and well written, I hope that this clears things up.😊
I know the Natlan playable characters range from light tan to pale white (and yeah it is frustrating), but there is still Iansan who legit has dark skin. Yeah it's one, but it's better than nothing.
@@stealthbrandon And it's also possibly why Iansan doesn't have that much screen time in the AQs. It's really annoying that China does not break out of this obnoxious beauty standard. It's no wonder there are no waifu in Genshin that has Iansan's skin complexion.
@@PeruvianPotato i played the game for a long time and honestly the gameplay itself is pretty boring but the story is too good. If you are wanna get into tw i suggest reading the manga or watch the story from yt
as an indian, tbh I don't really care abt the skin tone for the characters bcs ik there will be way more representation in the actual nation (food, poems, architecture- etc) and since i dont have twitter im just silently begging that its not the sumeru drama all over again
I concur I feel like this discourse actually educates more people in a weird kind of way. With people always mentioning how bad the representation is It allows people who are interested with the region to learn about it
Can I ask you a question? Sumeru was inspired by/tool from a bunch of different cultures, cultures that weren't at all closely related. Turkish, Persian/Iranian, the middle east in a general orientalist way, Egypt, and India. While I agree there's stuff you can learn from the in-game regions, you have to admit Natlan, Sumeru, and even Fontaine to a very small degree are treated differently; natlan is a mishmash of cultures, sumeru was the same, and fontaine had french, english, and ancient roman influence wrapped as one. So, here's my question: can you really, actually, learn much if the cultures shown are vastly different in real life and haphazardly blended together? Not like I'm expecting to learn much from a gacha game that primarily sells on lame sex appeal, worst part of genshin imo as somebody who loves the story, but when it came to Liyue and even Inazuma I still learned new aspects about both regions. Because both regions aren't a cluster of very different cultures, they respected Liyue and Inazuma enough to give them their own identity. And Mondstadt is just a fairytale with german additions. At this point I'm expecting Snezhnaya to be wholly Russian without anything clipped onto it. Idk, even as someone who's learned bits and pieces about foreign cultures and gained some respect for them (not in a racist sense, but like I wasn't surrounded by people of these cultures/backgrounds so I get to appreciate something I've never seen before), it feels like that reasoning falls flat for Sumeru and Natlan. Not to mention apparently some characters have Maōri names as well, which means the already vast and complex "mesoamerican and west african" land of Natlan is also taking from Pacific islander cultures. It only really adds to misconceptions and the homogenization of these cultures, which native americans and middle easterners already prominently struggle with. Same for Pacific Islanders, who are counted alongside Asian people for AAPI, even though both sides agree there's hardly any connection between their cultures. As an afro-indigenous person that does care, unfortunately, I really can't see it any other way.
also, natlan isn't just based on latin america. there's a character named ororon which comes from olorun, a god in the yoruba religion in *west africa*. yet he's still very pale. also, no idea why they mixed two completely different cultures together, but they did this with sumeru too - putting different cultures in the middle east into one region. but they can differentiate france and germany, or china and japan for the other regions. it's barely representation at this point.
@@Leif776they're fictional regions based on ACTUAL places and cultures...For them, because it's a different culture it's okay to take it and make the people be whatever they want aka pale AF or slightly tan at best. Now imagine if a different game took every aspect of Chinese culture but made everyone black. Yeah,the whole of the Chinese players would go insane lol
@@indigo3174 That doesn't change the fact that it's still fictional. Genshin Impact also has dragons, supernatural powers, and all-powerful Gods. Why does it matter? You're basically saying that a fictional world has to be based on real life.
@@Leif776 it doesn't, but it's weird that when a place is based on China it's portrayed in an accurate way,from names to clothes and culture but when it's other cultures and traditions it's not like that. That's just hypocrisy.
@@indigo3174 Liyue is not remotely accurate to china . people are dumb , Chinese empire have never been a costal empire that relied heavily on naval vessel. that completely fictional . lol... It's a chinese product for a chinese audience but Chinese empire where land lock . and there is no Rock element in Taoist elements , they used word Wood 木 (mù) Fire 火 (huǒ) Earth 土 (tǔ) Metal 金 (jīn) Water 水 (shuǐ) . No rock no geo energy complete fantasy , There no place called liyue * It's made for chinese audiences but it's total fantasy .
I'm honestly pretty sure that canonically he's just tan and he deliberately tans, so no I wouldn't count him as anything other than the standard "white" of mondstadt iygwim
@@Aruto-Kun80112 it's in the voicelines on genshin with the traveler and Paimon where paimon mentions something about Kaeya having a heavy tan, and also it was mentioned from Kaeya addressing Diluc about going outdoors, saying, "Maybe you'd actually get a tan," implying that Kaeya has a tan and it is better than being pasty.
honestly the "it's a chinese company" excuse doesn't work too well since the cn fanbase has been kinda pissed ever since sumeru came out. also, you mentioned a lot of japanese companies but chinese games are also capable of proper representation (example: reverse 1999. while there aren't that many dark characters now it's mostly because the story happens mainly in europe.) hoyoverse has shown that the can make dark skinned characters (eremite enemies and vanessa in the manga), genshin devs just have a history with not giving a shit about their players. i personally think we should just repeat the '1st anniversary disaster' because that was the one time that actually listened lmao
simply put statistically they dont sell aswell thats genuinely the only reason they dont make colored characters. they arent racist, they're greedy if colored characters made more in china, they'd make more but china is the majority of their sales, and in china they dont sell as well
That's still racist just because it doesn't sell well doesn't mean they can just use cultures like its some aesthetic and exclude the peoples@littlehamham3281
@@liliegladio6675 i mean they bastardized japanese history and used german aesthetic without any of the included culture but ian hear nun abt that i mean im still dissapointed there arent any good black characters or nun, but at the same time as a black man the amount of black characters in genshin impact really doesnt effect me. its really not a big deal for a fictional game, to pull from the real world for inspiration while at the same time remaining entirely fictional not everything that takes inspiration from the real world or uses the real world as a base, needs to be realistic in the sense that everything related to it must be the same as is in the real world
@@littlehamham3281 maybe but then u don't get minimize peoples because hoyoverse is milking their cultures for money, and basically saying that black/brown/tan people are just enemies but if it doesn't u have fun, good luck for ur pull though
@@littlehamham3281 the only reason dark characters don’t sell as well is cuz hoyo keeps giving them garbage kits. When dehya was first revealed literally EVERYONE was excited for her including the cn community but 4 some reason hoyo just had to make her basically unusable. It’s the same with every dark character in this game. Cyno, Xinyan, Candace, Sethos, the only slightly decent one is Kaeya and he was given out for free. Cn community also wants dark skinned characters, just one look at any genshin Chinese forum could prove that, but they won’t waste there money on useless characters which hoyo just so happens to make every single one of there dark characters. Simply put it’s not the Cn community at fault but hoyo’s colorism issues.
As a latino, I do not care, and I believe most people do not care. Most of the people I've met in my life are mostly quite light skinned (I could probably count the number of dark skinned people I've met with my hands alone), very rarely do I see dark skinned people, and I live in south america, it's just a fact that because so many south american countries had a big history with europeans, that most people are light skinned nowdays, so I'm not surprised neither offended at this, because it's the reality, sure there's some big countries with a considerable amount of dark skinned people, but they're the exception, not the rule.
As a latino agree and disagree but am not sure why its relevant for you or my case at all. Depends on what south american countries you are talking about but most natives, europeans and former slaves mixed together and their mixed raced descendants tend to make up the majority in quite a lot of places not European whites, heck even the whitest south american country like argentina or chile still tend to have Mediterranean tones so to act as if we are all light skinned like the characters in genshin is a crazy take. It annoyed the hell out of me when Hollywood blackwash characters like that Cleopatra movie/series they made recently just feels like a slight to the greeks and those that played a part in that culture and I for sure as hell would be wierded out if they made a hispanic or south asian Hercules. I do agree with you that most latinos probably dont care and it is funny to see the outrage towards a mainland chinese company about muh diversity but I can get where people are coming from because am guilty of it case in point when Hollywood do it in the examples I brought up earlier.
@@bendingbananas6540 Natlan is based off Latin America, reason why I decided to talk and share my opinion as a person from that region, sorry but what you're saying is completely irrelevant to what I was talking about. I am speaking as a Latino, Latino =/= South Asian.
@@Ikworsu Its also based on West africa, what are only latinos like you who speak for everyone apparently allowed to share their thoughts on the matter?
I’m pretty sure Mihoyo is more worried about the Chinese/Japanese fan base reaction. They REALLY don’t take things like this kindly. All HI3 players will remember the bunny girl incident, where they showed a video of all the characters wearing bunny outfits(sexy ones) and a huge outrage. I think it’s more the fear of their much larger, more precious, and more dedicated fan base rather than racism. Though to be fair, they don’t really like femboys, yet venti and lyney exist so take that as you will.
@@oyarichi2549 no that is a select few players. Ive seen a lot of examples on bili-bili(Chinese streaming service) where people say extremely racist things like “if the character is too dark I won’t play them” or something along those lines but more derogatory and insulting to the original culture. And as we saw with the Neuvillette charged attack event, the Chinese fan base won’t hesitate to use the government against hoyo. And Hoyo is actually extremely scared of their Chinese player base because of how unhinged they are.
2:03 Your point here still stands but I'd argue that half of these, are either pacfic islander or dark skinned asian. Still better diversity than Mihoyo
I hate to break it to all of you but cyno and Dehya are still white, thay just don’t look like that when put next to all of the other characters in this game who are about as pale as it gets. Compare their skin color to characters from anywhere outside of hoyo and you’ll see that.
I hate to break it to them but if theyre scared that darker skinned characters wont sell well then they gotta make them formidable units!! Part of the reason why no one pulls for the "dark skins" we have now is cuz generally they suck compared to other units! Some are even considered the worst units in the game!
yeah, just take one look at dehya... people were so hyped for her and excited to pull and then she came out and everyone realized her kit was dogshit even though her character and design is so cool
...I don't play Genshin, the regions are supposed to based off of real places? 💀 bro, I literally never would have guessed because everyone looks w h i t e and yea i know it's an asian game like people say, but still, cmon. what year is it again?
bro the thumbinal is so pretty yk i dont mind that shes peach but damn i hate her for her character design for a reason i couldnt figure out and that this is the reason i feel really dumb💀💀💀
What also upsetting is believe it or not there only 6 yea 6 dark skin characters from all these many limits or none limited characters there only 6 characters who have somewhat dark skin. There cyno. dehya. Candice. sethos. keaya. Xinyan how is that anough 😢 its really upsetting
@@ksvq2638 no offense to you man, i dunno who you are or who'm these are but I'm connected to every community there is in genshin. all I've seen is people just want anything to complain bout.
@@NoThisIsNotMe. Lol india probably is even in the top 10 markets for Hoyo so they couldn't give two shits 😂. Only chinese market matter to hoyo . So you saying "Oh i am indian i am mad" ain't gonna do shit .
Rah. I love Genshin Impact so much, it's my comfort game, BUT SERIOUSLY GOD PLEASE CAN WE HAVE SOME DIVERSITY. Sometimes it feels like the same character with different contacts and a new outfit over and over again. I'm at the point where I basically only play because Paimon is funny and the regions are pretty. :(
Im sorry, but if you’re only playing Genshin just for one specific character and the pretty environments, I feel bad for you. You should probably go find a different game 🙁 I’m saying this cuz I’m a formal Genshin player who quit cuz the game got too boring and repetitive
yeah go play another game like WuWa, it looks like genshin in character repetetiveness but it really isn't, they all even have their own animations in chara menu! ( and also Kuro Games don't work with russians 🙄)
@@SidenkoE51 aaa i do play it but its so laggy and i dont like it :( i mean i adore some of the chars and their animations, but i hate how little there is to do
@@_Iemonboy. Try HSR? A rumoured character Suligite has more melanin than the entire natlan cast... Idk if that's what you're looking for in a game in terms of playstyle but I'm a genshin veteran who switched to it and I really like the playstyle :) Lots of diversity in game and even mentions autism!
@@Tluk_bagienny I didn't know this since I don't have him, so I looked it up. IT'S WILD BREAKING FREE SHACKLE BREAKER SWIFT HARVEST TOOK ME OUT BRO IM DONE.
Being a male in Hoyoverse games is a death sentence mostly but being a male and a non white/yellow character is worst, I'm very scared for Sugilite from HSR since he's a male and dark skinned
I guess I can pass off Mavuika being white since they were probably going for a Himeko-ish look, but seriously... They have all these complex designs on their clothes and etc, yet they don't even pay attention to their skintone??? 😭
I think both sides are wrong. Hoyo should yes - represent more skin diversity however people should not be trying to cancel a whole company just because of skin color. It sounds ridiculous but both sides have both pros and cons. Apparently Hoyo has whitewashed the whole Natlan cast and people are trashing them, boycotting them for it. Of course, it could just be that there’s 100 characters and 10% are white and they represented the white (though that’s also wrong💀) but I rly don’t think that’s the case. Best case scenario, they make the characters more tanned in the gameplay and release like 7 or 10 more characters that have melanin (bc each nation has around 17 characters I’m pretty sure) Goodluck on both sides
The problem is, I DON'T TRUST HOYO to make black characters. Never forget Carol from HI. Ngl, I do want more brown characters because I'm literally playing Genshin because of Kaeya. Some characters have better pallete with darker skin too. It doesn't even need to be total black, I'm okay with more lighter brown or even red skin, it's just white pale character gets boring and repetitive. So really, don't play the game is the best way not to support the game. If you still play, you're having your priority wrong. They cater for their biggest income aka CN player. So unless CN complain is as huge as Zhongli official release that making him get a buff, you have small chance to get your wish. Meanwhile, just play different game instead. You're not going to die not playing Genshin lol.
They won't give Natlan characters dark skin because they can't butcher an entire nation's kit and meta relevance. Literally all dark skin characters in Genshin and HSR have subpar or outright terrible kits.
@@Billilv Or they can give Natlan characters brown skin, which isn't hard. But then again, their colored characters are consistently bad and having a full year of bad characters with brown skin is bad for business. They can't choose between giving Natlan brown skin or giving colored characters a good kit.
Another asian company is 5minlab from Korea. They have made a game called Smash Legends a game where the characters are based on the from the western and orient fairy tales and made a few dark skinned characters even where the character in question didn't really needed to have one
You are correct. That is 100% the reasoning behind Hoyoverse's design choices. Honestly though they don't even need to take the 'risk' as the global audience has proven time and again with their wallets that they only care about the issue for as long as it takes for them to get distracted by the new shiny thing to buy. I could certainly see them trying out some things with ZZZ though. Personally I don't really have a horse in this race and am more concerned with other aspects of the game's quality, writing, combat, etc. but I do think that a bit more effort in the area of culturally relevant character design would be a nice addition to the game. They already obviously put in so much effort into the musical aspect of that and draw inspiration from some often times rather obscure cultural folk lore. They clearly do their research.
different company lmao. but seriously, i don't get why they just make at least brown character. it doesn't need to be that black, just more variety. I'm okay with red skin too.
here's the thing... they will not make representation for a player base that is not even 5% of the 50 million players of the game. and they will certainly not cater to the 5% who are predominantly F2P.... want representation? pay with it with your wallet. freeloaders dont get an opinion on anything.... its exactly why MHY panics when CN and JP players complain. its because these 2 markets make up 98% of their revenue. of the 20 million that HYV makes every patch cycle. 19.5million of that comes from CN and JP.... the west (us and eu) who are rioting right now would not even make up 100k for the remaining 500k. if global were to stop playing it would not hurt their finances. heck it would actually be beneficial for them as it would free server congestion from all the freeloaders.... IF THE WEST REALLY WANTS REPRESENTATION AND THEY WANT TO BE HEARD. MAKE SURE THAT IN THE NEXT PATCH CYCLE YOU MAKE MORE THAN 19.5 MILLION IN SALES. that is how market and business works.... and its something you people need to learn. you are not important. you do not matter. you are not a loss if you leave. they would probably think that it would be better off if you actually did.
@@PeruvianPotato Only people who care about this is are western honestly , lol. if you follow chinese or japanese language site you won't fnd anyone talking about it , It a hot topic in english tiktok tumblr circles .
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
no, it is not beauty standards. they havent chosen to not have dark skinned characters to sell more.
when the natlan teaser dropped, it wasn’t just overseas genshin fans that were upset. the “demographic”, a lot of chinese fans, were also upset! they most absolutely can make dark skinned characters, they’re a billion dollar company. if they can have lgbt characters, they can have diverse skin tones.
a lot of people from all sides of the fandom would like darker skinned characters. a lot of characters actually look BETTER with dark skin. it’s not like asian people hate black people?? i’m chinese, i love melanin queens.
they have 0 reason to not have dark skinned characters. other similar games like reverse 1999 has dark skinned characters (im pretty sure, i dont play it) and they’re doing fine.
don’t blame it on the chinese fandom when it’s mihoyo’s fault.
@deco27worshipper I wasn't blaming it on the Chinese fandom. Sorry if I worded it like I was. I'm blaming Mihoyo. Mihoyo probably thinks they are not gonna sell well, not Chinese fans. I'm very aware that Chinese fans would have no issues with dark skinned characters, but Mihoyo probably thinks they will.
@@Reaper-Azurwrath Exactly. Companies make decisions based on what they think is the majority opinion of the market, regardless of how true their assumption is.
I love Reverse: 1999 one of the reasons I stopped playing genshin
While Hoyo does have implied queer characters they treat queerness flippantly. At the end of the day, every adult character is playersexual on demand which I do not count as true representation but as marketability and fanservice. Which...okay, fair. It can be seen as both a positive and a negative, yet Hoyo is not the only company to have characters with undefined sexualities to please more players.
And so, playable characters not having canon relationships within the game (either queer or straight), not having biological children, not having darker skin, etc., it all goes back to Hoyo wanting the characters to appeal to waifu/husbando collectors. I say this because their NPCs do have canon relationships, biological kids, and darker skin (even textured hair). So it's not a matter of Hoyo not wanting to include those things across the board. No. They just don't want to include it for playable characters because those are the "products" they sell to h*rny players.
@@Razor3000-u3f I think this is even worse because characters that were formerly very explicit in their queerness and very well written in regards to it (Mei ESPECIALLY comes to mind) have player-sexual expies. Even in hi3, Mei, Bronya, Seele and Yae are all very very explicitly queer- bronya and Seele kiss, mei is referred to as Kiana’s girlfriend more than once and they get married in pretty much every timeline but the main one, Yae and Kallen are in romantic love with one another. When Raiden Shogun and Yae Miko hit, they were made to come off as attracted to the player, which is kind of weird considering both were confirmed to be gay across every universe on more than one occasion. Same with HSR Seele, Bronya and Acheron. It really hurts to see tbh. It’s not like it wouldn’t sell either, because Hi3 basically confirmed everyone was a lesbian and still does very well in gacha sales.
something i find really offensive is people saying "china is racist thats why they dont have dark skinned characters" take a good gander at Reverse:1999, made by a Chinese company that has plenty of GOOD and WELL WRITTEN dark characters.
Honestly, I was one of the thing I thought of. Could be argued that it could be to do with Colourism more
It's probably still true though. East asians generally ARE colourist/racist. It brings me no pleasure to say it either, it's just the more you learn about asia, the more you learn the less-good parts. They're even colourist/racist to other asians especially south east asians. Filipinos are considered lesser than Koreans, Japanese and Chinese to those nationalities. It's just a sad fact about asia. If you go to some places in asia as a pale white person, they will point out how pale you are as a compliment (especially older people). Even if a black person doesn't face outright overt racism, they'll get backhanded compliments like how they're attractive despite how dark their skin is.
It can understand why people want to deny this when it's near impossible to not consume some Korean, Japanese or Chinese cultural product daily, obviously you don't want to feel bad about what you like, so it's easier to pretend it's just one company being problematic rather than a systemic issue, but it does no good to pretend these east asian cultures don't have any negative or uncomfortable aspects or problems just because we like what they make. The people at mihoyo both have a high chance of being colorist themselves, and are designing characters to appeal to the asian market first and foremost. If pale skin is what appeals to the asian market, if dark skin on characters is seen as a risk some designers or companies are willing to take here and there, and others aren't, what does that tell you? It's great that Reverse:1999 has those characters, but that's one game. Also, orientalist depictions are it's own problem. Notice that when they *do* make darker skin characters, they're very often a sexualized stereotype of an arab or indian (or mixing the two usually). This even applies to the character I'm seeing from Reverse:1999 just from looking it up. I see the game has a british empire/victorian era theme and oh, this dark skin woman who is clearly meant to be a desi woman in inspiration is sexualized and showing more skin than the others. Not what I'd call good representation exactly, and the vast majority of that game's cast are pale, so it's still following the norm.
Now, a mistake people make is associating this solely with white people or wanting to be them. It's really got much more to due with centuries of their own cultures. Asians have skin that changes more drastically. The darker asians in society were the peasants that worked outside on the fields etc, and the paler people were the nobles, royalty, etc that stayed inside. That beauty standard has remained to this day. Characters being always made pale or even retconned to be paler sometimes (Tidus from ff10) is one consequence of this (a far worse one imo is the skin bleaching creams).
There's also nothing you can realistically do about this. The reality is you, an outsider, can't change the cultural norms of the whole of east asia, which is the core root of the problem. So the options are to accept this problematic aspect of their culture and move on, or stop consuming games like Genshin that have this aspect that probably isn't going to change any time soon.
@@kit76149 I understand that there could be a possibility tbh because I am East Asian myself. But I guess I’m not so sure because my family has a darker skin tone. I don’t like accepting it because of the fact that people like my family are pretty rare and it’s kinda devastating that the skintone discrimination even happens inside of Asian culture.
Also for your claims on Reverse1999 not having that good rep is sorta good. Like you mentioned Kaala Bauna showing a bit more skin then others, and also Centurion being somewhat sexualized, but it isn’t really limited to them. There are other characters in the game who also show a lot of skin and it’s mainly for marketing. That’s not a really good excuse and it shouldn’t be an excuse but they’re not trying to sexualize poc women only. I mainly like to talk about their big diversity in characters because, they really do have much more characters with different backgrounds. They don’t shy away from having a character speak their native language or incorporate different cultures into their game. While Genshin (and, to the extent, Hoyo) does this. They don’t necessarily expand on it to the extent that bluepoch does.
I don’t really have better examples because I’m not that exposed to different games/media other then hoyo and bluepoch.
I’m not trying to defend them at all, but I’m trying to insinuate that Bluepoch is like a small stepping stone for having more diversity in Chinese company games (either that or I have an extreme false hope)
I can’t really say much else about your comment because yes a majority of it is true, because my ancestors weren’t of nobility, they had darker skin because of being in the working class.
Also, your other points gave me more insight about the whole skintone thing, so thanks for that.
I can also vouch for Arknights, also a Chinese gacha game whose world is inspired by real countries. And while it's Japanese FGO also has an incredibly diverse cast. So yeah, this is just a hoyoverse thing, not an exclusively Asian thing.
I've actually played a little bit of reverse 1999
light skin is associated with cleanliness / beauty in china. so they dont want to ruin reputation or revenue. as well as most of the highest sales come form china/japan.
the funniest part of this is that at least half(or more) of the npc characters are black/mixed etc. while all of the playable characters are pale af. If they can make most of the people in a nation black, then why can't they make black playable characters???
It's because they won't sell off as good as "white overworked girl №56" for CN players which are the most important playerbase for mihoyo
and alsoo cookie run kingdom have ALOT of diversity ranging from skintones and cultures and this coming from a korean company man 💀💀
Edit: ok so just for some correction in my part, Korea is def different than China in the whole fair skin culture thing, so I apologize for the misinformation
However we had really insensitive representations.
@@miuki2721Most of them are in Ovenbreak and there is one in TOA But Kingdom itself is fine.
they also have plus size rep😭
Holly berry and avocado @@cybergutz
@@VanillaIceCream-d2wi think for holly berry it’s just muscle?
reverse 1999 is made by bluepoch, which is a chinese company too yet they have way more diversity. the characters even have accents in the game (most of the chars have accents in the english dub)
YEAAHHH WE LOVE REVERSE 1999 ‼️‼️
its not rlly an asian thing but specifically chinesse thing as far as im aware.the chinesse culture has weird opinion on dark skin like its dirtiness or something? idfk-
thats why they rather want white characters, majority of chinesse playerbase also isnt intrested in many black characters... but clearly mihoyo doesnt care about npcs cuz those are half the time way blacker than the blackest playable characters...
*also people from latin america come it diffrent colours, everyone not being black or dark skinned isnt innacurate*
It’s not hard to make a dark skinned character YOU FREAKING DID WITH THE NPCS
Giving their record, I don’t think I would be mentally prepared to see a playable angry mitachurl representing me. 😅
@@iBleed_RoyLty4368 Jet black probably r*pist Churls are the represent we get im afraid. The only charater in a Hoyo game that is black is form HSR, metioned in this video.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo Oh not “the inarticulate head of the Herta space station’s security” Arlan 😭
Btw there is a character in honkai impact 3rd named Carole and they made her hate her skin colour (she’s dark skinned) so she bleached it or something and now she’s pale😭
She's just like me
@@Stvhlingerthat is so embarrassing
@@Stvhlinger i don't think that's something to brag about
Im a HI3 player. Didnt know this
BUBBLE GUPPIES HAS BETTER REP THAN HOYO
HOLY SHIT I FORGOT ABOUT BUBBLE GUPPIES BUT YES
😭☠
YOU JUST UNLOCKED MEMORIES 😄 😭
Bro the magic school bus has better rep
BUBBLE GUPPIES OMG, MEMORIES.
Reverse 1999 is a great example of diversity. Not only they have POC like Indians to Latino but they have the characters speak their native language and that’s what I love about this game they have characters speaking Russian, Italian, mandarin, Japanese, like even Hexadecimal code(not a language but it’s cool) they also have two characters that are non-binary and one of them is intersex. The company behind Reverse 1999 is also a Chinese company like Hoyoverse. I’m just yapping at this point I just wanted to talk about a game made in Asia doing diversity well.
Reverse 1999 is easily one of the most diverse and interesting games I've ever played! Glad to see it being mentioned :)
@@freefall8912 not only that, it has amazing time travel storylines and a completely chill and fun going fanbase
im a indian and they could have atleast made them tan
There's kaeya I guess
Edit: GOSH I KNOW HE ISNT THAT TAN I WAS JUST SAYING HE’S A SMOL BIT DARKER THAN THE REST 😭😭😭😭
@@YourSecretAdmirror in most of the official arts he looks like a russian porcelain doll
@@esteaorari but technically he is SORT OF tan-
@@YourSecretAdmirror even a sunburn would look more tan then him (im a tan myself)
@@YourSecretAdmirrorhe's barely tan bro even some white ppl are darker than him 😭 even though ur technically right he's one out of like 60 pale ass characters
Bro(hoyo) said “everything about your culture is beautiful except you” is it bad to just have a character look black like me is that a crime
Well if what I just read is true(I have doubts) then it is indeed a crime in china apparently.
@@ashleyandanime4815 💀 I’m not going to china then but wait one of my relatives went to china and never was arrested for being black but that was 10 years ago so idk know
Also Reverse:1999 is a Chinese company and they have SOOOO many characters with dark skin, and there’s so many different cultures mixed into the game. The worst part is Reverse:1999 is also made by a Chinese company, just like Genshin. 😭
"Pizza hut has pizzas, so why does Mcdonalds not have pizzas even though both are American companies? Therefore, Mcdonalds must be racist to Italians since they are an American company like Pizza Hut, but they don't sell pizzas."
so what? did it hurts u?
so? did reverse 1999 just use dark skin to boost sales? is that racist too?
Even lgbtq+ characters are featured in r1999
the most diverse game too...Even the accent of the characters are almost accuraten
As someone FROM latin america, to me Natlan feels more like hawaii
me pasa!!! la verdad me encanta mualani y en mi mente, su tribu se asemeja un poco a la cultura peruana costaña (es todo referente a hawaii pero me generó tanto aprecio que es como mi hc jajsjs)
@@gumicidio He visto amigos decir que las tribus de natlan se asemejan a muchos lugares xD algunos hasta me dijeron las islas pascuas, almenos todos ven un poquito de su cultura esparcida por toda la region uwu
@@ittybittyshinystar And that's what we really should care for. The culture and it's peoples ain't their skin color, but everything that actually makes this culture, for example their food, dance, habits, etc.
@@Jasiuc330yeah People are too sensitive when no one gives a fuck.
Hoyo literally started as a fanservice company for men. They openly stated that they wanted to make anime girls for fellow otakus. And yeah, looks matter when you're selling waifus and husbandos. That's definitely the reason why Hoyo is scared shitless to make an unappealing character. And although they do make global games they still take into consideration mostly Asian players, CN specifically. Is it because of a sense of loyalty? Is it because most of the revenue comes from Asia? Is it...fear? Because when CN kicks up a storm the CN government is more likely to notice and breathe down their necks which is not the case with the rest of the world. Honestly? I have no idea. But beauty standards are the root cause of this (because of the nature of the game).
The fact that hoyo tried to appeal to CN players but even they're complaining about this lmao 😭
@@luvz4laylawoah, really? I'm so used to the low-key high-key racism from the eng/NA side with all the "wait for natlan" and "it's fantasy" and "darker skin will ruin them", are they genuinely upset as well?
If so...I really hope they are. At the very least hoyo can frame it as "making dark skinned anime waifus for the other degens we haven't appealed to yet".
@Vesperad0 yeah! I actually saw quite a lot of CN players commenting about this on Twitter and other Chinese apps! This shocked me too ngl but looks like even they see how stupid Hoyo's actions are (which is great)
the thing is asians (im speaking from a korean perspective) usually don’t have super pale skin 😭 it’s just that pale skin is a beauty standard because it means that you’re rich and korea used to be a very poor, working in the fields country.
and so many of the characters are named after gods and goddesses of those cultures swell
Also, something that Hoyoverse is burdened with is making characters with a dark skin tone: have a bad skill set (like Xinyan, Dehya, Candace or Arlan), and if it's a promotional five-star(like Cyno): need a LOT of investment to be make it do decent damage.
The only dark-skinned character who is considered good, even exceeding some 5 stars, is Kaeya.
with how amazingly genshin manages to represent cultures through it's music and in game locations, i don't believe that the skintone issue is a matter of cultural representation and really just a racial one. Not that that's any better, but it just really annoys me when people say that genshin isn't or is bad at representing all of these diverse cultures when it's completely untrue. Most of the people saying Natlan's representation is bad aren't even from Africa or South America (I'm from the latter) and so they can't understand how just the music and environment are such an important aspect, even more so than the skintones.
Unfortunately, genshin's lack of black characters is likely almost entirely due to china's beauty standards and blatant colourism, and as a game company, they have to create products that sell. If you create black characters, they'll sell in the west but very badly in the east. If you create pale characters, they'll sell very well in both demographics. For that reason, i'm very content with the actual effort hoyo has put into representing all of these nations culturally. Dumbing down entire cultures just to skin colour is stupid and is an extreme form of disrespect.
TLDR: Genshin is phenomenal at representing cultural diversity, horrible at representing racial diversity. Culture is not dependent on race, and it's disrespectful to say it is. Regardless, it still sucks that china's colourism robs us from darker skinned characters.
Tbh yeah I do wish they'd make more dark color skin characters, not only for inclusion but some designs just look really pretty with it. It's a bit off topic kinda? I understand the conflict of the conversation and agree with your points btw.
It's like drawing lighter or beautiful colors on a darker base, it makes the colors pop really nice on some designs.
Not that a dark canvas can't work with dark colors ofc but it just looks so pretty on some character designs imo.
YES TOTALLY!!! im a beginner with drawing, coloring and stuff but one friend of mine is going to art school and told me about how gorgeous and difficult is to resemble the irl black skin because of the shadows and many combinations to make it look like in real life. i always love when people draw black characters with purple, blue or golden pallets like candace or cyno fanarts...hyv has such an amazing art style and the aanimation and creative team behind are good when they take the irl references to make a character with the genshin detail...its sad that even if the team procceds with a dark skin character, the final decision would be to white washing it...
LITERALLY! sm of the sumeru characters look so off to me cos the colour palettes don't really suit their skin
we should show mihoyo reverse:1999: representation wise, it's amazing
my friend showed me the apple character 😭 the art is pretty cool though maybe I’ll try it
It's also unusual how with their new music track in Natlan, there were clearly darker skinned people in the choir and among the people playing the intruments (if I remember correctly)- so if they have voice actors and people in the music department that are poc then why not in game?
let me know if I said anything wrong or false information because my memory is bad and I don't wish to offend anyone
Hoyoverse doesn’t really listen to the Chinese audience either. The most used characters for Chinese players are Dehya, Kaeya, and Xinyan. Along with the very few “dark skinned” characters. During the release of Natlan’s trailer, Chinese players were also pretty angry at the company for whitewashing many of the characters. So it’s really not because of beauty standards but more of hoyoverse being a company full of racist people.
It nice to see that even the chinese people care about it too 😊
"The most used characters for Chinese players are Dehya, Kaeya, and Xinyan" Can you provide proof of that?
@strwberrymil stop lying those characters weren't used so you can justify you being a horrible human being
so im korean, and i can say that, uhm, southeastern asia is slightly racist, im not tryong to insult asia but uh, asia is lowk racist, especially china since its a communist country. so LBGTQIA+++ and darker complexions are controversial there, so hoyoverse is more so trying to please their government more than anything.
still other games like Reverse 1999, Dislyte and Mobile Legends are chinese companies but they have plenty of tanned characters
@@crewmatewillthrowthesehand7600 fair though, genshin in general lacks melanin, not china
Correction for the begining of the vid, not ALL those Pokemon characters shown are "Black". Melanin does not equal black. There's Indian, Spanish, and Polynesian in the mix depicted as well. Also, not every dark skined anime character is black either. There are Tan Asians too. I'm just sayin' is all
@@ShadowReaper1227X there are canonically black pokemon characters tho
Also! The creator of black butler, does the character art for Twisted wonderland and Yana Toboso is a female!
Not trying to be rude!!
I just find it weird how people use the excuse that it’s a Chinese company?…
Or “it’s jUst a gAMe” like do you hear urself? A game with all this culture but not the people? Like YES WE GET IT THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE LIGHT IN THESE COUNTRY’S BUT ARE U JUST GOING TO IGNORE ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARENT LIGHT? ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARE BLACK? JUST IGNORE THESE PEOPLE? AND THEN USE THE SAME EXCUSE EVER SINGLE FK TIME? It’s so infuriating how people tryna talk as if they knew shit…
Fr though… they NEED to step up their game and actually give us some dark skinned characters. Like I get they are a Chinese company but it’s a GLOBAL game. There isn’t any excuse for this
I read that since it's a Chinese company, they do things based on what the Chinese players say.. Since a lot of money comes from China players. Annndd Chinese people are mostly light skinned, So we probably won't see dark skinned people unless Chinese players want it.
Thisss
Like, ofc there's people with lighter skintones in latinoamerica (I'm one actually, a part of my family has lighter skin) but not everyone is of the same skintone
Just in my city I've seen people of almost ALL types of skintones
It's not an excuse, if you're using cultures for your characters, then represent them respectfully!
Hoyoverse it's just quite incompetent in that regard honestly, I've not been in the chinese or japanese community for genshin so I can't say if they have strong opinions about this, but it's still pretty shitty that they just won't give melanin to their characters lol
@@MoonRenMMD fr what makes me more sad is it’s not even asking for much it’s just asking to make one black character or maybe 2 and see how the community react to this and they can see how much people truly want these characters they act like nobody wants black characters but it’s the complete opposite of that what makes it so stupid…😩
still a game tho, game are meant to be entertaining, you are complaining about a non-issue. their games their rules.
Capitano just stole all darkness from their skins
That’s what his kit will be when he becomes playable
Elemental skill: WHITEWASH
They could get away with it with Sumeru due to the Middle East.
This ish CAN’T fly in Natlan, literally got zero tolerance for it.
As much as I hate to say this I'm chinese and I know that MOST (MOST MOST MOST MOST) Chinese game (or media in general) producers don't give two flying shits about race representation, mainly because it just doesn't appear as a problem to the Chinese audience. Most complaints about rep are from western parts of the fandom. I never rlly liked Mihoyo as a company because they cater towards the male otaku audience way too much...I don't think a lot of female chinese genshin players would mind a dark-skinned character but the ppl who pay them the most want white girls with black stockings and minimum clothing, while dark-skinned characters are just an occasional f*tish to them. Sigh.
Omg your so bas'ed oh wow, but seriously ive seen too many comments saying that "I'm Chinese and i love my self some melanin" when the facts are if your in china right right now you in the chinese world and the way you think is too that place same applys anywere, just because Reverse: 1999 is chinese and does good representation don't mean shit. The exceptions proves the rule.
@@Greatcelestialkaligo That like one game that doesn't compete anywhere near genshin number , scale and appeal in china .
@@stealthbrandon youtube deleted my comment, and i dont remeber what it said
@@Greatcelestialkaligo Most likely it was about dislyte and people bringing up these 2 games that are small companies , One game didn't even launch in china (Dislyte ) and was unpopular . . and only manage to find revenue by pandering t o chinese furry whales . the other game people mention are all niche titles that cost a fraction of a fraction to make compared to mihoyo games
Like damn Hoyo would it be that hard to make a tall dark skin man with dreadlocks
The thing is,,,,,they proved they can
They literally did with the enemies
@@stupidheadwisp but I want him to be playable 😭
@@stupidheadwisp not a damn npc 😭
For a game that sells characters on sex appeal they sure are missing a huge demographic.
...outside of just fetishizers of course. But damn give Kinich some color
Genshin could NEVER
And im sad abt it😢
As a south east Asian the natlanians have lighter skin than me😔😔
Me just staring at the rat eating m&m’s the whole time
Same😂
SAME
Also Natlan is also based on West Africa (eg. Yoruba singers and drums in their music, the character olorun) so it just makes it even worse to know that no african inspired characters will be in it
And plenty of Chinese companies have made dark characters. Dislyte, Reverse 1999 and Mobile legends to name a few. Its just that Hoyo is infested with colorists in their HQ who can't stand the thought of melanin entering their game that they made the sky and UV rays from the sun fake lol
"Pizza hut has pizzas, so why does Mcdonalds not have pizzas even though both are American companies? Therefore, Mcdonalds must be racist to Italians since they are an American company like Pizza Hut, but they don't sell pizzas." Brilliant logic you have here.
@@Tharros95 thats the saddest logic I've ever seen. My point is to refute the fact that Hoyo isn't able to make dark characters cos they are a Chinese company and that its just them voluntarily excluding dark characters.
And your argument is agreeing with me that Hoyo is voluntarily doing that? Cool lol
Admitting that a billion dollar company is stealing cultural aesthetics and being okay with it isn't the flex that you think it is. They will not pick you for disagreeing with the fact that colorism is colorism. Let's not be in denial here
@@crewmatewillthrowthesehand7600 Didn't know you were stupid enough to think that Mihoyo would lack the capability to make dark characters. It's literally just changing hexcodes.
Mihoyo doesn't owe you shit. All cultures are open to be reinterpreted as fictional works, with no obligation to have any specific skin colors. Don't like it? Then don't play. You guys are the smallest player demographic, but the loudest and most whiny.
@@Tharros95I dont think ppl should expect mihoyo to have darker characters but think of it as a chance to satisify their players that would dig into their wallets for a darker chara or bring excitement to them as western fans, a better experience if you shall. As an open world game with multiple regions, it does seem expected to have a character darker than a light tan in places like a desert, or region inspired by african culture bc duh?
For example, id see it unreasonable everyone is dark in a region inspired by france, or everyone is indian in germany. Even for a work of fiction somehow its just really not immersive to have everyone pale snow to a tan in places you wouldn’t expect it. Thats me though, I think the game could improve there
@@Mem0447 Making dark characters to satisfy western players would come at a cost of not satisfying JP, SK, RU, TW and CN players. You think Mihoyo would piss these markets off just to satisfy westerners that don't spend even a fraction of these markets? Why should Mihoyo satisfy people who contribute the smallest financially to the franchise?
As an latin American i feel kinda offended by the skin color and hair,because on the south America hair are normally curly or wavy and here the skin commonly is a dark tan or a light tan and the tradicional dressing here is normally associated with a religion the Umbanda,i think Mihoyo should really study the cultures,like the religion the continent is associated with like Brasil native religion is umbanda that is a Afro-Brazillian religion,and i think they should study more the animals and it would be very cool if Mihoyo add an Afro-brazillian martial art the Capoeira and the instruments like the berimbau,the pandeiro the agogo,the atabaque,and even some of the latin America other NATIVE religions and REAL culture and native cooking(i am Brazillian btw,and sorry for mistakes i am not too good in english.)
Reverse:1999 also has dark skinned characters and they are a small Chinese company.
And so does dislyte which is even smaller than them
@@SukunaYaoi Omg! I freaking love dislyte!! Yeah, but anyways, it is sad that genshin is taking inspiration from cultures but not representing diversity in their game
I mean yeah, keyword small, because Chinese people don't appeal to diversity.
something I think its hilarious when you started talking about Asian companies that make a lot of representation was DevSisters. a Korean company that made the entery cookie run saga, and were able to do a better job then Hoyoverse and THEYRE CHARACTERS AREN'T EVEN HUMAN, THE'RE FRICKING COOKIES
It's that situation all again "your culture would look great in our game but not you"
Well actually I’m pretty sure Hoyoverse only cares about giving cultural representation and not diversity. The clothes are all based off actual cultures references (aside from Nahida since she was based off a pale white fairy). Plus because they’ve broken CCP rules before the CCP will be watching over them and they don’t allow black skinned characters. Also everyone is semi-racist in some way, I know everybody will be like “I want dark skinned characters! I will pull for them!” But it will obviously take your brain some time to register it. Dark skinned characters can absolutely slay but at first glance your brain might resort to something else. Not saying Hoyoverse is justified for not making dark skinned characters I just think people are skipping over the details.
I would just like to mention that arabs are primarily white, so the sumeru argument didnt make much sense. People just think ‘near africa = black’ but really only sub-saharan africa is majority black, while the sahara region has people with a lighter skin tone. I 100% agree that they should black characters, I’m black myself, but I just thought I should mention that because somehow no one in the genshin community realizes that.
I, also, would like to add that colonization happened outside of the americas as well. While I'm not super educated on it (thanks US school system you really struck gold), it's not hard to see that the lighter skin in those regions is a newer occurrence. Just like, say, ancient Greece, there was a variety of people with differing skin tones. However most of the ancient Greeks were light to olive skinned, and the same but opposite is likely the case in the middle east. The land's proximity to Europe and Asia and Africa aided in their skin, alongside trade and culture and the like. So while there may have been lighter skinned people in the general middle/near east, they definitely weren't the majority. Religious groups also probably had something to do with it, like Christianity and Islam "fighting" for those regions through conquests and enslavement. Not necessarily like america and west africa's enslavement based on appearance/race, but forced labor nonetheless.
Ok. I genuinely need to get this off my chest. Hoyo IS colorist, I am NOT defending them, but this is getting ridiculous.
1. Not enough poc characters bc Hoyo's main audience (Chinese) dislikes dark skin and has the power to lower their profits by boycotting their banners or reporting them to the ccp, (as proved by their responses towards the boycott in the west and Neuvillete's nerf) which in turn lessens their funds for their games. Unfortunately America's whales are NOTHING compared to the money made from Asian whales like Japan and China.
2. All dark skin characters, even the ones with bad kits are getting buffed by recent patches, especially with the release of Natlan. Maybe they're stille niche yes, but they're undeniably not ignored. And also Cyno isn't bad. Mid, but not bad. Not meta and dependent, but other 5 stars have flaws too. Some are worse and some are better.
3. Names are just names. The characters are not representing the black deities, js like how the archons are not representing the demons as how they are named. This is probably the most flimsy argument tbh.
4. Natlan is based off of the countries by the Ring of Fire, so there are bound to be wider ranges of skin tones. Too pale? Perhaps, yes. But you can't say that characters aren't dark enough or gray, bc that is js insulting. I can't believe y'all say Iansan is gray when people have different undertones. Like ok you complain abt diversity when you also complain about DIVERSITY with actual poc characters. It's not like they look like a literal cement block. (Also Arlan's talent names? Y'all gotta be so dirty minded to think "Shackle breaker" and "Swift harvest" are racist. It's as generic and "epic" as most talent names are. Imagine if Nahida is black, y'all would complain about her getting locked up bc of the sages' prejudice. But you know that's not the point of her character don't you? Because the point is is that y'all be nit-picking details of a character and call it racist.)
5. All enemies are black? Yh bc they are in Natlan, and even then most poc npcs are pretty chill, and the playable characters are not written in a problematic way. (Pacal, Cyno, Candance, Xinyan etc) Btw, even if some of them are villains doesnt mean their skin tones are tied into that. Anyone can be a villain. Skin tones aren't their whole character y'all.
6. Remember the Natlan Symphony? They hired POC singers y'all. Real people. Yes while diversity in the game is nice too, we can't deny that the fact they are willing to hire poc people are some form of evidence that they care more about the money made from their banners and characters specifically. Their representation of the cultures are still nuanced and considerate, not accurate, but it's not like they're malicious about it anyway.
I understand people's concerns about the lack of diversity, but sometimes you gotta acknowledge the circumstances Hoyo is in. It isnt all white and black, there are gray areas in this controversy too. And it's looking pretty gray, except the characters y'all are supposedly complaining about. Again, Hoyo is doing business, not charity. Their mainland is first priotity.
Also abt the other chinese games with more rep -- are they as popular as Hoyo games? Are they as large scale as Hoyo games? Obviously to keep developing their big ass games they need to keep a stable income, and their main source of that is the gacha. Unlike nintendo and others, they are funded by the gacha system. Also, devsis is becomimg more and more greedier recently, so there's that I guess.
Also ironically, Lilith Games is based in the same city as Hoyo and their game Dyslite has so much POC characters based off of mythology that I was surprised when I saw some of the character designs
@@lienhua5558 Like most bad internet argument lilth game is like the worse possible argument Lilth games isn't some well known company in China , No one heard of them there a niche company and there games are inexpensive to make , and they focus most of there games on the North American market . They focus on a niche because there games are cheaper to make and the fanbase is smaller . dislyte isn't some super successful game in china lol. it's revenue is a drop in the bucket compared to genshin
I don’t think these designs deserve that much hate, as a person of color myself (half south eastern and also living in Paraguay South America), i understand if people want their characters to be darker, but let me be honest here, some of the Fan redesigns are pretty bad, they get far too overboard with skin shading that they look more like afro than actual Native American or Polynesian.
Many of the slight tanned characters (Xilonen, iansan, moalani & kachina) aren’t even that bad or that off from actual indigenous people.
Yet people still want them darker.
I can still at least tell their indigenous At a glance even with the slight tan.
those game comparisons are unrelated because china is not japan, and unfortunately china is really really racist, not ifs and buts about it. just take into consideration that they had to edit the black panther and star wars movie posters in china removing the dark skinned people. just because japan is really progressive does not mean the same applies to china.
You do have point
ya, they so racist that minority has added score in exam and exempted from 1 child policy, they so racist they want to provide proper education to muslim.
should have learn the american way and physically send them to heaven.
or follow Japans' lead, like how they almost entirely remake the culture heritage of Ryukyuan island's people, whose now cant speak their own language and even lost their own name and call okinawa. Even though Ryukyuan island chain is not under japan's sovereignty.
What makes it worse is the enemies you fight in certain areas are dark skinned so they're basically saying "oh hey look we have dark skinned characters, they're just all murderous villains.." Like no Hoyo just no, that's not what we're asking for D;
Literally the only npc we have meet that is like actually dark and has great writing is Jeht. That and Xinyan is the closest to a bkack person or even a slightly darker skin colour the game has made and Xinyan' kit is shit. The other 'tan' characters could be called southern European and it would make sense.
@@abdiabdi3225 And everyone was so hyped to have Jeht as a playable character yet we're all still waiting
But the thing is that even light skin people aren’t even that white.
I’ve never seen an actual WHITE person in real life. Like paper white.
I’m Dehya color in the summer and Candace color in the winter.
Also characters like Amber, Kuki Shinobu, and stuff, even if they’re pale, they go outside all the time and should be at least a little tan. Or at least have some color in them and not be paper color.
And I’m CHINESE.
Since you're Chinese, 漫画、动画里，都是这种肤色啊。可以说要么是黑，要么是白，根本没有什么小麦色、黄棕肤色。natlan PV 里 Iansan 我感觉就是黑了
@@Billilv 我了解你的想法。 有可能是应为我是美国长大的，我和你想的不一样。
我就觉得漫画和动画片里的人都太白了。 我认识的人都比这个黄一点
I don't think the issue is that mihoyo doesn't add darker skinned characters in their games its that their chinese community and by an extent the CCP have potential opposition to doing it, and this is because genshin is heavily ccp approved in order to push this strong appearance for china, you can see some of it in hsr too. So either they're going to ease into it or something else.
I dont know why they are so scared every one loves Dehya. The problem is her kit is trash, but everyone loves her regardless . Mihoyo should just make a character like dehya and make them good
Fun fact: Too much sun can permanently, and unnaturally darken your skin, giving you dark spots and leathery skin.
Xinyan is as country bumpkin Chinese as you’ll ever get but her story is so damn Black coded. I’m surprised they didn’t do the same for Deyha considering she just looks like a grown up Xinyan.
“Sand grains” used as referring to the Eremites is still one of the only phrases that made me literally, and quite dramatically, gasp to this DAY.
Wait what does sand grains mean?
@@KMTepi that they belong in the desert?? idk whats this person's on
@@KMTepi Sand grains are what the Aranara (mainly Aranakin) calls the Eremites, quite exclusively. Considering the slurs people called real life people that were born in desert regions (one being “sand n*****), many thought it was a weird call. Many jokes are made about it though, such as (to explain the most overused one, as they’re mostly Star Wars references) Aranakin’s name being just two letters away from Anankin, who had some issues with the Tusken Raiders in the story.
@@anapple6912 I mean, you shouldn’t try to make it sound like you knew, if you didn’t.
Many people have already spoken about the “sand grains = sand n*****” context. In fact, it was a long time ago in many forums and they (Hoyo) didn’t make it subtle. I thought it was just the average racist fanbase joke until I played through the region myself. They didn’t hide it, they just made non-humans say the quiet part out loud for them.
honestly, while the rep is definitely disappointing, it’s already doing better than sumeru did, so that’s.. something ig.
personally I’m not a fan of changing the skin tone of pre-existing characters, but I definitely think hoyo should have started with them darker. in cases like this, where a character is based off a culture that they’re looks don’t represent.. I can definitely see why people might draw them darker though.
I’ll be completely honest even I would make the skin tones a tiny bit darker, not exactly noticeable but yeah. I was drawing kaveh and alhaitham once and I colourdropped official art and I could barely see the skin against the white background- I compared it to the colour I use for white characters and the difference was crazy.
sumeru characters aren’t even just whale they’re fucking paper. some pics of nahida look like her skin is GLOWING.
it’s honestly crazy how all the darkest characters came out early game (kaeya, xinyan, and iansan was shown in a trailer years ago so counts more as being an early game design compared to new characters)
Honestly as a Turkish person i dont think sumeru is that bad Characters on Sumeru city can be white cuz they dont need to spend time in the sun a lot but in the sumeru dessert they should be tan like we saw on Dehya, Cyno etc. Honestly i never saw a black person on my country (can be different on other countrys) but thats America they should be at least 1 black person right? In the end color doesnt matter yall pull anyway
Its not even about the color anymore, its straight up cultural appropriation. Why base, and yes, BASE a nation off of racially diverse cultures if you knew you couldn't represent the people? It was an idiotic move tbh. And because i know I'll probably have someone argue this, ill just explain here.
Lets say i was inspired by..demon slayer to make my own anime. It would be based in..idk america, and it would be gunslingers hunting..idfk skincrawlers. They all work for a big organization and they each have unique guns that suit them and a style in which they use them. See? You could obviously point out similarities, but it is its own thing. Other than rearranging letters in a name, what did mihoyo change about the cultures they stole from? Nothing really. Nothing at all.
@@PsychoDuckee word.
i'm sorry if this seems rude, but are you from Africa or South America? do you really understand how important musical and cultural representation are for us? because genshin has definitely excelled in those two categories. The company is blatantly colourist, i'm not arguing against nor defending that, but saying that these cultures are being "appropriated" just because of the character's skintones disregards the sheer amount representation hoyoverse has given us. Please don't dumb down entire countries and cultures just to our skintones, it's completely disrespectful.
@zannulti Do you understand what Mihoyo is doing? This is basically the sum of it all, "We like the culture you made, but we don't like you." That is it. Mihoyo is taking people's culture and not representing the people who worked hard to make that culture. Take a look at Chasca. Her name is Andean, and she is dressed like a cowboy who slaughtered Andeans. Is that good representation? Guess what, that isn't about skintone and no, that isn't good rep. You like our stuff, but don't like us is disrespectful.
Natlan is a fictional country in a fictional world, no real life tribe worshipped the archons, faught the abyss or lived together with Saurians as Pokemon.
You are okay with them changing the religion, the history, the landscape, the natural animals and plants.
You don't care about all of those things being changed from the culture its inspired by because you understand its a fictional world and fictional nation in a fictional universe but the skin tone you have a issue with?
Is skin collor all that culture is and not all the other things you clearly don't mind them changing?
Its the exact same thing, Natlan is not meant to represent anything or anyone irl, its a fictional place with its own history, races, geography and species.
@FallenPhoenix-ml5mn can brown and black people not exist in a fictional world? All things fictional can be traced to real world things. This is a fantasy game, and they should have kept it fantastical. They brag about how much research and time and effort they put into looking up cultures, only to never represent the people. The yoruba, my people, are rarely ever represented, and hoyo decides to use Olorun as "Inspiration" for ororon, who people are now calling Olorun and even try to correct *me* when I tell them that they're wrong. The issue I have is that when things are misrepresented constantly, the thing represented will fade and the misrepresented form will be the representation. I'm not fine with ANYTHING in natlan, but because I like the game, I'm calling them out on the things they did. But people won't ever understand unless they were put in the position. So if your opinion differs from mine, that's fine, and I won't try and change it, but with that being said, I won't change my opinion as well, and tha opinion is that mihoyo is a colorist company that either won't or can't take criticism because of the fans that defend their every bad decision.
I don’t condone black or whitewashing or forced diversity but I’m saying Genshin Impact literally is surrounded by mixed cultures like East Asia Europe South East Asia etc and soon lower parts of Africa and South Asia, that would be a good time to continue what they do and add characters that have traits of their ethnicity. I’m not sure what they were thinking for Sumeru…
hi, please refer from using the term “blackwashing” because it’s not an actual word . It was made on twitter by racists who tried countering the argument of whitewashing w this!! Instead use racebending bc it’s less harmful, ty x
@@bluessyz it is real though. if you change people who are not supposed to be black to black you are disrespecting tne original racial identity of the character just like how whitewashing disrespects dark skin. Let me ask you then, why do people hate the Cleopatra documentary? It got so heated that Egyptians, who are supposedly the representation in the documentary. got mad that a lawyer who works with the cultural consultants from Egypt critisized Netflix and sued it for blackwashing the history.
Whitewashing has actual history and records of racism towards people of color not even just black people tied to it and has been dated back to hundreds of years ago. “Blackwashing” was never a thing till a few years ago when the argument of representation came along with racist white men who wanted to spread the word saying “have a taste of your own medicine”. Racebending has always been the word people use. If Blackwashing is real then we might as well make brownwashing and asianwashing” real by your logic.
@@bluessyz you guys just gonna make excuse for turning white characters black don't you. I am brown and I find it ridiculous some of you defend turning white characters into black ones and say skintone does not matter. but when someone draws Nessa or Xinyan slightly whiter, you guys cry whitewashing.
@@bluessyz It is not just white people who are the only ones hating blackwashing. Many other people also do because it is lazy performative activism to "represent" black skin and double standard when you also want to condemn white to black skin change. If you suddenly turn someone like Zeus into a black person do you think black people get represented? many artists on twitter do the black edit and defend it saying skin color is not important if the characters are white, studios even raceswap and let real black actors play white roles.
I love dark skinned people
I was sad that no one in new area had dark skin :(
Iansan does.
What's frustrating is that they did dark-skinned characters before with Kaeya and Xinyan, and Iansan, from what I heard, was featured in an early trailer, but then they stopped for some reason. Also Natlan characters look weird. I'm still convinced they were darker originally, but then Hoyo changed them. Like the Archon looks alright, but the talked about trio just looks off with the current skin tones.
I heard that some leakers confirmed that their original designs were darkskinned :3
EVEN SOME OF THE ASIAN COMMUNITY (china, japan, korea, ect) AGREES THAT HOYO SHOULD HAVE DARK SKIN REP IN PLACES THAT ARE BASED OFF OF PLACES WITH DARK SKINNED PPL😭😭😭😭😭
Yea but Not all, and hoyo fears asian ppl don't wanna spend Money on darker Charachters, bc neither an european country nor the USA is under the top 15 playerbases.
Hoyo sees darker Skins as a gamble, and ironicly doesnt want to gamble.
Mualani is not Black, im a hawaiian and she has a fair skin tone to my race, if anything the people making her black is more racist than Hoyoverse. 🤨
1. Mualani, despite what her name may suggest, is Latina-coded. Hoyo has a habit of taking random, "exotic" sounding words from cultures vaguely related to the place their regions are based on and slapping them into characters, declaring them to be their name. Take a look at the many, MANY characters with food and drink names, especially in Sumeru and Fontaine. Her name is not an indication of anything, especially since Natlan is explicitly based on Latin and Hispanic cultures. More than likely, Hoyo just looked up names vaguely related to South America, saw "Mualani", and gave it to their character.
2. There are black Hawaiians.
3. A lot of Hawaiians have darker skin than Mualani, so making her darker isn't erasing any "Hawaiian" representation.
4. Looking at edits of the characters with darker skin, it's clear, based on the rest of their coloration (i.e. their clothes), that they were originally designed with darker skin in mind. Hoyo simply whitewashed them because white skin is considered "clean" and "pure" by racist Chinese beauty standards, and they want to appeal to their largest spenders, aka Chinese players.
@@marysmile1603 1st point still doesnt really stand. Just because a character is "(insert race here) coded" doesnt mean they're that race :/ (take the many black coded anime characters with skin white enough to reflect the sun, for example). Plus, a lot of latinas have her exact skintone. In fact i'd say shes pretty on par with most latinas i have met in person
@@shampeije7997 Even so, I've seen a lot of Latinas complain that the only type of representation they get, both in their own cultures' media and in others, is of the light-skinned variety.
I'm not saying EVERY Latin character has to have dark skin, but it'd be nice to see something beyond 'vaguely tan'. Encanto, for example, did this concept amazingly, having a huge variety of skin tones among the Madrigal family and even covering every hair type as well.
If Disney can do it, so can Hoyoverse. They just don't want to cause they're pandering to a single audience that has been conditioned to believe that "pale skin = good and clean" and "dark skin = bad and dirty".
Most natlan characters would fit in with the people of the culture they're representing with their name besides Citlali, Chasca (idk why she looks like Spanish conquistador) and Ororon (while obviously having darker skin than the majority of the genshin roster he wouldn't not fit in with the people his name is meant to represent)
while mualani does have a skin tone like us i don't think someone who spends a lot of time outside as a guide and watersports shop owner would be that pale brah 💀💀💀 but i think she's like relatively fine overall
Money. That's it. There's no any more profound or secretive racial reasons or something like that. It all comes down to money. They make what they know will surelly sell instead of gambling on something that could go really well or really bad. They're a company goddamitt.
Let's dig slightly deeper than the surface and explore what exactly would cause darker skin inclusion to be seen as a "gamble" or something that could go "really bad"...
Additionally, other East Asian companies/games have little problem including darker skinned characters in their works, and people even in those places accept it. She mentions some in her video above, then you can look to others like Dislyte which is also from China and has TONS of brown and black characters. Then you learn that in Arknights the character Thorns, who is black, is apparently beloved in these places. And so on.
I think there's more to the story than "oh it's simply not profitable." HoYo just seems weirdly reluctant to make "too many" prominent brown/black characters, and make them *strong* to boot, like a Kazuha or Hu Tao or Furina.
@@nicelight7794 Honestly the "Toxic Beauty Standard Discourse" is beyond me, I suppose I'm way to stupid to completely grasp everything that entails or I'm simply too indeferent to actually care, either way, "Helps a lot he who doesn't get in the way" as they say in my homeland... or something like that. At the end of the day the only thing I know for certain is that the final decisions are made by the suit guys at the top, after all they are who provide the funds and all of that, so if they see something as not profitable they will simply not accept it.
Yall know that Arlan's (hsr) skills are literally named shackle breaker and swift harvest right?
Spit my drink out, wth
So mihoyo is racist
GASP??
WHA
rut row raggy 💀
not even forgetting to mention how beautiful scarabias designs are! Honestly whats been happening with hoyo is really dissapointing.
imo i agree sm with the need for more skin representation but i think that some people are getting a bit TOO pressed over this, you get what i mean? im latina myself and i honestly think its dumb seeing angry people on twitter because the natlan characters lack melanin, but YEAH IM SORRY IF THIS WAS WORDED HORRIBLY IDK HOW TO SAY IT BUT I AGREE WITH YOU
All I see is
20% of people being right and actually hating and disappointed that characters don't have melanin even tho the region they live on is based of people with varieties of skin tones
Then there's the 80% here dunking on Genshin just cus they wanna ride the hate train
I'm not here to defend hoyo but damn the haters be plaguing the comment sections of these criticism videos
Saw one guy say Mualani is so sexualized with big chest and limbs but all I see is normal proportion body and her chest and back is normal for a girl of her body type
Ohh boy they haven't seen other gachas with insanely unrealistic body proportions
Genshin is very tame with those fanservice and body proportions than other CN or any other Gacha games man
Have you seen wuthering waves or Honkai Impact, the chests have their own orbit and jiggle like it's made of jelly
Please stay on topic of them being colourist not sexualization when it's one of the tamest out of most anime gachas
IMO: Genshin has always had a problem when it came to trying to represent cultures without actually representing them. When you look location-wise, the buildings, structures, and scenic views are very depicted and detailed just like how these views are seen in real life. Germany's houses really do look similar to Mondstat's, ancient houses of Japan do look similar to Inazuma. (I visited Japan a year ago and only spent around two to three days in Kyoto so I don't know if that's totally true). I think I started to notice the misrepresentation in Inazuma. A lot of characters who wore traditional outfits, mainly didn't follow with what traditional outfits of Japan looked like. For example, Yae Miko's outfit looking different that a shrine maiden's outfit or Raiden's outfit looking different from a yukata. Another thing I noticed with Ayato is that his love for boba (which was invented in Taiwan) when boba was really only popularized in Japan during the 90s. If Inazuma was really based off the Edo period Japan, then I don't think boba should be such a huge part of his character. By the time Sumeru came out, a lot of my South Asian friends quit Genshin for good because they told me that they were excited to see their culture represented in a better way. They were extremely disappointed to see most of the characters having light skin and were even more disappointed when people decided to defend it by saying "There are light skinned people in MENA (Middle East North Africa)" While there may be some light skinned people of these nations, majority of the people that live in South Asia have relatively dark skin. I feel similarly towards Natlan because I am Mexican myself. While there are light skinned people in Mexico (as my dad always explained to me when I was young, "There are all kinds of Mexicans, some that are even blonde and have blue eyes"), it also still isn't the majority of Central and South Americans who do have light skin. I still think that the idea of people trying to "boycott" Genshin is completely ridiculous however. Genshin is known to not really fix things like the weapon banner being completely unfair compared to HSR, the rewards system not being rewarding enough, and endgame (I know about imaginarium theatre but it was just recently announced, very late in the game). There's nothing that we could really do about the character's skin color at the moment. Once Mihoyo has chosen something for the game, it is set in stone. All we really can do it just sit disappointed.
"The characters, events, and locations depicted in this game are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This game does not aim to represent or depict any real-world groups, cultures, or beliefs. All content is created for entertainment purposes only." -mihoyo customer service xD it not a problem it by design .
Genshin was created in a Chinese studio,in china the beauty standard is to be very pale and in a lot of eastern asian countries the beauty is pretty strict. For them darker skins are seen as "unattractive"
you cant say hoyo is not racist at this point
Project moon, for all their faults, still does a pretty good job at representing darker skinned characters in their games despite being a Korean company, so The arguments claiming that it's because Hoyo is an 'Asian company' are pretty lame.
Not to mention reverse 1999, which is a Chinese company.
they also say that like if they're asian they're not racist... people like this annoy me
why list only those developers? "asian" is a broad term so let's also shed light on other East Asian companies that bothered with its darker PoC characters:
1. Guilty Gear from 1998, made by Arc System Works has multiple brown and black characters (including recolors too) that are gen SO attractive-
2. Street Fighter by Capcom has characters from many brown countries like Brazil, Spain, India, Turkiye, Kenya, Egypt, Jamaica, and recently that new girl kimberly who's African American, all under a Japanese company
3. Splatoon by Nintendo. Marina has full on melanin on her she prolly sucked pearl dry to albinism lmao and Frye, a squid inspired by indian culture is *darker* than the whole Sumeru cast that's also (partly but still validly) inspired by it 🤦🏽♀️
4. Cookie Run by Devsisters, based in South Korea. despite being literally cookies, they not only had many, many skin ranges but diversity in body types too?? Genshin! take notes‼️‼️‼️
5. pokemon, also Nintendo - self explanatory bc there's variety of trainers that aren't just typically pale white like Nessa and Ryme and even their world isn't earth like Teyvat is so like...
6. IDENTITY V. OGs will remember~ one of the survivors, Enchantress, is very explicitly a black woman of Haitian ancestry. yes she's a ragdoll, but she isn't by any means lightwashed to conform to the beauty standards tho. plus, the designers really don't hold back especially on skins so there's more diversity in them too. (side note; the fact that there's many skins unlike in genshin like what is stopping u, a corporation to limit so much compared to a smaller dev team?)
7. prolly more out there that are either ones i gen dont know or highly underrated ones. still, the fact that these popular game companies had defied these standards multiple times and are loved by its community... it has literally thrown that lame excuse out the window period and I'm a darker asian 💀
edit: i didn't bother to watch the whole vid bc i assumed they'll bootlick hoyo like so many channels do to get views and she has addressed half of the stuff above :') aight lemme just- *dies in embarassment*
PROJECT MOON MENTIONED‼️‼️🧠🗡️📚📖🚂👹
@@Janal_Hoe When you said Street Fighter I also got reminded of Tekken from Bandai Namco (Again, a Japanese company) who also have their characters come from different countries/speak different languages, such as Leroy, a black american, and Eddy whose Brazilian.
Also speaking of darker asian, I'm Korean American and I'm tanned jut from living in California, it's not like Asian people are immune to tanning or something so at the very least they could put more tanned characters in those Asian inspired regions if making POC's for the mostly POC region is that hard for them
Cookie run kingdom (a Korean game) casually having better representation.😳
its a COOKIE GAME. there are brown cookies, black cookies, pink cookies, red cookies ect.
that wouldnt make sense if your saying that they have better representation because they are COOKIES. theres thousands of different cookies
I think that you misunderstood, cookie run has kingdoms based on REAL places, the pure vanilla kingdom based on Germany, the golden cheese kingdom based on ancient Egypt, the mala sauce tribe based on Aztec civilizations. Cookie run is surprisingly diverse and well written, I hope that this clears things up.😊
Same is genshin tho? What's your point??
@@potato_queen_303
@@YinPatterns I mean there was peppercorn.... But eh, still better than genshin.
That's cookie run OVENBREAK which has been criticized for islamofobic and racist updates. Cookie run kingdom is more diverse and more respectable
I know the Natlan playable characters range from light tan to pale white (and yeah it is frustrating), but there is still Iansan who legit has dark skin. Yeah it's one, but it's better than nothing.
Brazil is the only place you can get away with that comment. Peru- never.
and iansan is like the least popular design in the chinese polls so yeah. literally dead last
@@stealthbrandon And it's also possibly why Iansan doesn't have that much screen time in the AQs. It's really annoying that China does not break out of this obnoxious beauty standard. It's no wonder there are no waifu in Genshin that has Iansan's skin complexion.
The way i gasped when you mention twisted wonderland
TWISTED WONDERLAND MENTIONED 🗣🗣🗣🗣
Never played it but the character designs look really cool.
@@PeruvianPotato i played the game for a long time and honestly the gameplay itself is pretty boring but the story is too good. If you are wanna get into tw i suggest reading the manga or watch the story from yt
as an indian, tbh I don't really care abt the skin tone for the characters bcs ik there will be way more representation in the actual nation (food, poems, architecture- etc) and since i dont have twitter im just silently begging that its not the sumeru drama all over again
I concur I feel like this discourse actually educates more people in a weird kind of way.
With people always mentioning how bad the representation is
It allows people who are interested with the region to learn about it
Real like ghoste (a person on tiktok) research sumeru CHARACTHERS on their clothes and it had representation
True, while i would love melanin w/ chars the rep in culture in game is much more rewarding
Can I ask you a question?
Sumeru was inspired by/tool from a bunch of different cultures, cultures that weren't at all closely related. Turkish, Persian/Iranian, the middle east in a general orientalist way, Egypt, and India. While I agree there's stuff you can learn from the in-game regions, you have to admit Natlan, Sumeru, and even Fontaine to a very small degree are treated differently; natlan is a mishmash of cultures, sumeru was the same, and fontaine had french, english, and ancient roman influence wrapped as one.
So, here's my question: can you really, actually, learn much if the cultures shown are vastly different in real life and haphazardly blended together?
Not like I'm expecting to learn much from a gacha game that primarily sells on lame sex appeal, worst part of genshin imo as somebody who loves the story, but when it came to Liyue and even Inazuma I still learned new aspects about both regions. Because both regions aren't a cluster of very different cultures, they respected Liyue and Inazuma enough to give them their own identity. And Mondstadt is just a fairytale with german additions. At this point I'm expecting Snezhnaya to be wholly Russian without anything clipped onto it.
Idk, even as someone who's learned bits and pieces about foreign cultures and gained some respect for them (not in a racist sense, but like I wasn't surrounded by people of these cultures/backgrounds so I get to appreciate something I've never seen before), it feels like that reasoning falls flat for Sumeru and Natlan. Not to mention apparently some characters have Maōri names as well, which means the already vast and complex "mesoamerican and west african" land of Natlan is also taking from Pacific islander cultures. It only really adds to misconceptions and the homogenization of these cultures, which native americans and middle easterners already prominently struggle with. Same for Pacific Islanders, who are counted alongside Asian people for AAPI, even though both sides agree there's hardly any connection between their cultures. As an afro-indigenous person that does care, unfortunately, I really can't see it any other way.
"Arlan's there... but he's fucking irrelevant" LMAO FR THO I ONLY WANT HIS DOG FR
SAME HIS DOG IS ADORABLE
Wait isn't Peppy Asta's dog?
DON'T DISRESPECT MY SON LIKE THAT 😡
The only black charater in a hoyo game...
@@GreatcelestialkaligoAnd his kit is GOD AWFUL and for some reason reference slavery???
xin yan and kaeya were completely forgotten
They really said "taking the culture but not the people" 😭
Ikr 😢
also, natlan isn't just based on latin america. there's a character named ororon which comes from olorun, a god in the yoruba religion in *west africa*. yet he's still very pale. also, no idea why they mixed two completely different cultures together, but they did this with sumeru too - putting different cultures in the middle east into one region. but they can differentiate france and germany, or china and japan for the other regions. it's barely representation at this point.
I mean, both Natlan and Sumeru are fictional regions. So they can mix whatever cultures they'd like.
@@Leif776they're fictional regions based on ACTUAL places and cultures...For them, because it's a different culture it's okay to take it and make the people be whatever they want aka pale AF or slightly tan at best. Now imagine if a different game took every aspect of Chinese culture but made everyone black. Yeah,the whole of the Chinese players would go insane lol
@@indigo3174 That doesn't change the fact that it's still fictional. Genshin Impact also has dragons, supernatural powers, and all-powerful Gods. Why does it matter? You're basically saying that a fictional world has to be based on real life.
@@Leif776 it doesn't, but it's weird that when a place is based on China it's portrayed in an accurate way,from names to clothes and culture but when it's other cultures and traditions it's not like that. That's just hypocrisy.
@@indigo3174 Liyue is not remotely accurate to china . people are dumb , Chinese empire have never been a costal empire that relied heavily on naval vessel. that completely fictional . lol... It's a chinese product for a chinese audience but Chinese empire where land lock . and there is no Rock element in Taoist elements , they used word Wood
木 (mù)
Fire
火 (huǒ)
Earth
土 (tǔ)
Metal
金 (jīn)
Water
水 (shuǐ) . No rock no geo energy complete fantasy , There no place called liyue * It's made for chinese audiences but it's total fantasy .
Poor Kayea bro, almost forgotten
Right? One of the first characters made and the darkest
I'm honestly pretty sure that canonically he's just tan and he deliberately tans, so no I wouldn't count him as anything other than the standard "white" of mondstadt iygwim
@@DDGFK9743 I did not know that- where did you even find that out from??
@@Aruto-Kun80112 it's in the voicelines on genshin with the traveler and Paimon where paimon mentions something about Kaeya having a heavy tan, and also it was mentioned from Kaeya addressing Diluc about going outdoors, saying, "Maybe you'd actually get a tan," implying that Kaeya has a tan and it is better than being pasty.
honestly the "it's a chinese company" excuse doesn't work too well since the cn fanbase has been kinda pissed ever since sumeru came out. also, you mentioned a lot of japanese companies but chinese games are also capable of proper representation (example: reverse 1999. while there aren't that many dark characters now it's mostly because the story happens mainly in europe.) hoyoverse has shown that the can make dark skinned characters (eremite enemies and vanessa in the manga), genshin devs just have a history with not giving a shit about their players. i personally think we should just repeat the '1st anniversary disaster' because that was the one time that actually listened lmao
simply put statistically they dont sell aswell
thats genuinely the only reason they dont make colored characters.
they arent racist, they're greedy if colored characters made more in china, they'd make more
but china is the majority of their sales, and in china they dont sell as well
That's still racist just because it doesn't sell well doesn't mean they can just use cultures like its some aesthetic and exclude the peoples@littlehamham3281
@@liliegladio6675 i mean they bastardized japanese history and used german aesthetic without any of the included culture but ian hear nun abt that
i mean im still dissapointed there arent any good black characters or nun, but at the same time as a black man the amount of black characters in genshin impact really doesnt effect me. its really not a big deal for a fictional game, to pull from the real world for inspiration while at the same time remaining entirely fictional
not everything that takes inspiration from the real world or uses the real world as a base, needs to be realistic in the sense that everything related to it must be the same as is in the real world
@@littlehamham3281 maybe but then u don't get minimize peoples because hoyoverse is milking their cultures for money, and basically saying that black/brown/tan people are just enemies but if it doesn't u have fun, good luck for ur pull though
@@littlehamham3281 the only reason dark characters don’t sell as well is cuz hoyo keeps giving them garbage kits. When dehya was first revealed literally EVERYONE was excited for her including the cn community but 4 some reason hoyo just had to make her basically unusable. It’s the same with every dark character in this game. Cyno, Xinyan, Candace, Sethos, the only slightly decent one is Kaeya and he was given out for free. Cn community also wants dark skinned characters, just one look at any genshin Chinese forum could prove that, but they won’t waste there money on useless characters which hoyo just so happens to make every single one of there dark characters. Simply put it’s not the Cn community at fault but hoyo’s colorism issues.
Wait, you’re the person who made the “how listening to vocaloid feels like” videos. Cool
Ngl though Xilonen would look so much better in dark skin 😭
EXACTLY
As a latino, I do not care, and I believe most people do not care.
Most of the people I've met in my life are mostly quite light skinned (I could probably count the number of dark skinned people I've met with my hands alone), very rarely do I see dark skinned people, and I live in south america, it's just a fact that because so many south american countries had a big history with europeans, that most people are light skinned nowdays, so I'm not surprised neither offended at this, because it's the reality, sure there's some big countries with a considerable amount of dark skinned people, but they're the exception, not the rule.
As a latino agree and disagree but am not sure why its relevant for you or my case at all. Depends on what south american countries you are talking about but most natives, europeans and former slaves mixed together and their mixed raced descendants tend to make up the majority in quite a lot of places not European whites, heck even the whitest south american country like argentina or chile still tend to have Mediterranean tones so to act as if we are all light skinned like the characters in genshin is a crazy take. It annoyed the hell out of me when Hollywood blackwash characters like that Cleopatra movie/series they made recently just feels like a slight to the greeks and those that played a part in that culture and I for sure as hell would be wierded out if they made a hispanic or south asian Hercules.
I do agree with you that most latinos probably dont care and it is funny to see the outrage towards a mainland chinese company about muh diversity but I can get where people are coming from because am guilty of it case in point when Hollywood do it in the examples I brought up earlier.
I'm southeast asian and i do care. Dont speak for all of us
Me Indonesian here, I really don't care lol
@@bendingbananas6540 Natlan is based off Latin America, reason why I decided to talk and share my opinion as a person from that region, sorry but what you're saying is completely irrelevant to what I was talking about.
I am speaking as a Latino, Latino =/= South Asian.
@@Ikworsu Its also based on West africa, what are only latinos like you who speak for everyone apparently allowed to share their thoughts on the matter?
I’m pretty sure Mihoyo is more worried about the Chinese/Japanese fan base reaction. They REALLY don’t take things like this kindly. All HI3 players will remember the bunny girl incident, where they showed a video of all the characters wearing bunny outfits(sexy ones) and a huge outrage. I think it’s more the fear of their much larger, more precious, and more dedicated fan base rather than racism. Though to be fair, they don’t really like femboys, yet venti and lyney exist so take that as you will.
Most Asian are enraged about this too😅😅😅😅
considering what happend to carole "incident" too can you blame them? Cn and jp fans are brutal
@@Ishakai_ never upset the asian hikkikomori incel men, they're unhinged 💀
@@ninny_alt yes like I said, it’s probably not all because of racism, but definitely a factor.
@@oyarichi2549 no that is a select few players. Ive seen a lot of examples on bili-bili(Chinese streaming service) where people say extremely racist things like “if the character is too dark I won’t play them” or something along those lines but more derogatory and insulting to the original culture. And as we saw with the Neuvillette charged attack event, the Chinese fan base won’t hesitate to use the government against hoyo. And Hoyo is actually extremely scared of their Chinese player base because of how unhinged they are.
2:03 Your point here still stands but I'd argue that half of these, are either pacfic islander or dark skinned asian. Still better diversity than Mihoyo
Are we gonna talk about how almost all the dark skinned characters aren’t that good meta wise
looking at xinyan
@@bendingbananas6540 LOOKING AT DAHYA or I forgot her name.. but that black-red-gold from sumeru 🫵😹 lmao even 5-stars...
@@SidenkoE51I LEGIT WAITED FOR DEHYA AND TURNS OUT SHE WAS USELESSSS😭😭😭😭
Looking at Cyno (he's kinda mid, still play him)
I hate to break it to all of you but cyno and Dehya are still white, thay just don’t look like that when put next to all of the other characters in this game who are about as pale as it gets. Compare their skin color to characters from anywhere outside of hoyo and you’ll see that.
I hate to break it to them but if theyre scared that darker skinned characters wont sell well then they gotta make them formidable units!! Part of the reason why no one pulls for the "dark skins" we have now is cuz generally they suck compared to other units! Some are even considered the worst units in the game!
#fixdehya
yeah, just take one look at dehya... people were so hyped for her and excited to pull and then she came out and everyone realized her kit was dogshit even though her character and design is so cool
...I don't play Genshin, the regions are supposed to based off of real places? 💀 bro, I literally never would have guessed because everyone looks w h i t e
and yea i know it's an asian game like people say, but still, cmon. what year is it again?
bro the thumbinal is so pretty
yk i dont mind that shes peach but damn
i hate her for her character design for a reason i couldnt figure out and that this is the reason
i feel really dumb💀💀💀
What also upsetting is believe it or not there only 6 yea 6 dark skin characters from all these many limits or none limited characters there only 6 characters who have somewhat dark skin. There cyno. dehya. Candice. sethos. keaya. Xinyan how is that anough 😢 its really upsetting
Can i get a "HOOOYYAAAA!!? VERSE TO MAKE BLACK CHARACTERS SINCE THE ONLY ONE WE HAVE IS DEHYA."
inb4 someone says "bUt wHaT aBoUt KaeYa/XinYaN"
this drama only exists in west, i see no one caring even a bit here on other side
Actually, many MANY people in Asia are very angry, because they want that representation too
@@ksvq2638 no offense to you man, i dunno who you are or who'm these are but I'm connected to every community there is in genshin. all I've seen is people just want anything to complain bout.
I live in India and I’m mad so your argument has been proven false
Man I wish I was born in china there no blacks on there, and I can express my inner racism freely
@@NoThisIsNotMe. Lol india probably is even in the top 10 markets for Hoyo so they couldn't give two shits 😂. Only chinese market matter to hoyo . So you saying "Oh i am indian i am mad" ain't gonna do shit .
Rah. I love Genshin Impact so much, it's my comfort game, BUT SERIOUSLY GOD PLEASE CAN WE HAVE SOME DIVERSITY. Sometimes it feels like the same character with different contacts and a new outfit over and over again. I'm at the point where I basically only play because Paimon is funny and the regions are pretty. :(
Im sorry, but if you’re only playing Genshin just for one specific character and the pretty environments, I feel bad for you. You should probably go find a different game 🙁 I’m saying this cuz I’m a formal Genshin player who quit cuz the game got too boring and repetitive
yeah go play another game like WuWa, it looks like genshin in character repetetiveness but it really isn't, they all even have their own animations in chara menu! ( and also Kuro Games don't work with russians 🙄)
@@SMACKADOOS ive tried but i hate everything else T^T
@@SidenkoE51 aaa i do play it but its so laggy and i dont like it :( i mean i adore some of the chars and their animations, but i hate how little there is to do
@@_Iemonboy. Try HSR? A rumoured character Suligite has more melanin than the entire natlan cast... Idk if that's what you're looking for in a game in terms of playstyle but I'm a genshin veteran who switched to it and I really like the playstyle :) Lots of diversity in game and even mentions autism!
Hoyo not only did Arlan dirty by nerfing him to the ground compared to the beta but also gave him the most racist skill/eidelon names imaginable
@@Tluk_bagienny I didn't know this since I don't have him, so I looked it up. IT'S WILD
BREAKING FREE
SHACKLE BREAKER
SWIFT HARVEST TOOK ME OUT
BRO IM DONE.
Being a male in Hoyoverse games is a death sentence mostly but being a male and a non white/yellow character is worst, I'm very scared for Sugilite from HSR since he's a male and dark skinned
When I saw the thumbnail I was like dang that looks better (and obvi more culturally chillllll n’stuff)
I guess I can pass off Mavuika being white since they were probably going for a Himeko-ish look, but seriously... They have all these complex designs on their clothes and etc, yet they don't even pay attention to their skintone??? 😭
"dark skin: NOT in" is the funniest thing i've heard all day
I think both sides are wrong. Hoyo should yes - represent more skin diversity however people should not be trying to cancel a whole company just because of skin color. It sounds ridiculous but both sides have both pros and cons.
Apparently Hoyo has whitewashed the whole Natlan cast and people are trashing them, boycotting them for it. Of course, it could just be that there’s 100 characters and 10% are white and they represented the white (though that’s also wrong💀) but I rly don’t think that’s the case. Best case scenario, they make the characters more tanned in the gameplay and release like 7 or 10 more characters that have melanin (bc each nation has around 17 characters I’m pretty sure)
Goodluck on both sides
The problem is, I DON'T TRUST HOYO to make black characters. Never forget Carol from HI.
Ngl, I do want more brown characters because I'm literally playing Genshin because of Kaeya. Some characters have better pallete with darker skin too. It doesn't even need to be total black, I'm okay with more lighter brown or even red skin, it's just white pale character gets boring and repetitive.
So really, don't play the game is the best way not to support the game. If you still play, you're having your priority wrong. They cater for their biggest income aka CN player. So unless CN complain is as huge as Zhongli official release that making him get a buff, you have small chance to get your wish. Meanwhile, just play different game instead. You're not going to die not playing Genshin lol.
They won't give Natlan characters dark skin because they can't butcher an entire nation's kit and meta relevance. Literally all dark skin characters in Genshin and HSR have subpar or outright terrible kits.
They can tell the story how African black is "relocated" to America ?
literally who's forcing them to give terrible kits to dark skinned characters
@@localarsonist4484 Nobody, and yet they've consistently butchered all of their colored characters and till now there's not a single miss
@@Billilv Or they can give Natlan characters brown skin, which isn't hard. But then again, their colored characters are consistently bad and having a full year of bad characters with brown skin is bad for business. They can't choose between giving Natlan brown skin or giving colored characters a good kit.
@@Bartobatos yeah ik, they most likely do that bc they don't want to waste good kits on characters that cn incels won't buy :/
Another asian company is 5minlab from Korea. They have made a game called Smash Legends a game where the characters are based on the from the western and orient fairy tales and made a few dark skinned characters even where the character in question didn't really needed to have one
You are correct. That is 100% the reasoning behind Hoyoverse's design choices. Honestly though they don't even need to take the 'risk' as the global audience has proven time and again with their wallets that they only care about the issue for as long as it takes for them to get distracted by the new shiny thing to buy. I could certainly see them trying out some things with ZZZ though.
Personally I don't really have a horse in this race and am more concerned with other aspects of the game's quality, writing, combat, etc. but I do think that a bit more effort in the area of culturally relevant character design would be a nice addition to the game. They already obviously put in so much effort into the musical aspect of that and draw inspiration from some often times rather obscure cultural folk lore. They clearly do their research.
"well china has censorship" rev1999 has actually pretty good diversity and is a chinese game
different company lmao.
but seriously, i don't get why they just make at least brown character. it doesn't need to be that black, just more variety. I'm okay with red skin too.
here's the thing... they will not make representation for a player base that is not even 5% of the 50 million players of the game. and they will certainly not cater to the 5% who are predominantly F2P.... want representation? pay with it with your wallet. freeloaders dont get an opinion on anything.... its exactly why MHY panics when CN and JP players complain. its because these 2 markets make up 98% of their revenue. of the 20 million that HYV makes every patch cycle. 19.5million of that comes from CN and JP.... the west (us and eu) who are rioting right now would not even make up 100k for the remaining 500k. if global were to stop playing it would not hurt their finances. heck it would actually be beneficial for them as it would free server congestion from all the freeloaders.... IF THE WEST REALLY WANTS REPRESENTATION AND THEY WANT TO BE HEARD. MAKE SURE THAT IN THE NEXT PATCH CYCLE YOU MAKE MORE THAN 19.5 MILLION IN SALES. that is how market and business works.... and its something you people need to learn. you are not important. you do not matter. you are not a loss if you leave. they would probably think that it would be better off if you actually did.
Bro more than 5% of genshin impact players are black idk where you found that info. But yes hoyo doesn’t give a shit about representation
*CN
They couldn't give less of a crap about Japanese players lmao, they only get worried when the CCP gets involved
@@PeruvianPotato Only people who care about this is are western honestly , lol. if you follow chinese or japanese language site you won't fnd anyone talking about it , It a hot topic in english tiktok tumblr circles .