the first thing you said, that genshin isn't using exact real places or people but takes just inspiration from reality... I tried to explain that to some scaramouche fans at twitter in an argument like a year ago and I recieved insane amounts of hate. Most of the fandom is really idiot (they're american kids after all) and they can't comprehend this. you can get a lot of hate for just saying that. ( just to be clear: as someone from middle-east, i don't like how hoyo didn't release brown or black characters neither in natlan or sumeru. I want black characters too.)
@@ChiyoTachi That thing won't do anything more than show how people doesn't like the game, something like that happened last year on the hispanic community called "Unfunaversary".
I'm surprised that people who feel strongly about the lack of representation are still playing Genshin. There was a lot of conversation about this when Sumeru came out. There were grumblings about it during Liyue and Inazuma. After several community discussions, almost four years, and only a few darker skinned characters being released, I think it's clear nothing will really change. So I'm surprised that people who find this a deal breaker have stuck around this long. Edit: I'd love to see more dark skinned characters (and wider variety in character models in general). I'm simply of the mindset that after Genshin's obvious track record it's probably not going to happen.
This is the most logical evaluation i’ve heard from a content creator. I was curious what your conclusion would be when going into the video and was not disappointed as everything checks out. The logic is consistent, the ethical/moral implications that follow naturally fall in alignment as they have a solid bases of reasoning to be built on. Which is not surprising or out of the blue because I’ve found your viewpoints to always be grounded, reasonable, and well thought out. I think the only thing to add is how China/Chinese people on average operate, how their beliefs/ideals/practices will not always align with your(who ever reading) nation/region’s ideas. I mean people ‘could’ try to force them to comply but that’s likely going to yield no results or negative results at worst rather than any hope of a “positive” change that’s only positive from the aggressor’s perspective and worldview. I’d be fine if they were whatever color they came out as or don’t come out as. It’s fiction, there’s no claim for accuracy, literally all made up. Also motivation for change is important. HSR has a lot of quote “boss babes” and they are beloved characters because there’s not a woke/feminist idealogical push behind them that more often than not yields an insufferable result. The same applies for tokenism and/or forced diversity for sake of diversity/social brownie points/investment money from dubious megacorps. Also it’s sad this gets a bigger stink than something tangible and would make more sense to be upset about like china’s extermination endeavors… but hey, priorities amirite?
Thanks for the comments, appreciate it^^ Yeah, I thought that it was odd that people claimed "more representation" but there was never any mention of how the lines should be drawn: Is there a "quota" on the nr of characters, how should they be represented, what skin tone color in hexidecimals would make it feel "represented", how do you meaningfully distinguish between people of different dark skin tones in a stylised anime game, etc. Nobody engaged in these discussions and yet it is crucial. From questioning these ideas, I reasoned that if you create a fictional setting which is based off of history and present it as a factual retelling (i.e. Assassin creed) then the boundaries of "do's and don'ts" are much clearer - i.e. you have a source. But for Genshin those boundaries are very loose due to it advertising itself as "high fantasy" arpg with an explicit ToS since day one that "nothing is related to actual events, people, etc.". This means the "source" is Genshin themselves and that you can't really "whitewash" a character that was never of a particular skin tone to begin with. So to your point in the second last paragraph, I also found issue with the Genshin boycott in that they seem to demand diversity/inclusion/equity/transformation (DIET police xD) from Hoyo and want to define the boundaries of "do's and don'ts" themselves. That screams of opportunism from a dubious megacorp (like Sweet Baby Inc). It seemed very coordinated, especially with the VA's and the petition going up. Anyhow, I do think that once 5.0 drops and the story gets going that people will forget about this. A lot of "critical" Genshin CC's need their pay day, so they will come back.
@@KokomiClan well it’s a love of diversity and inclusion…….… until it’s suggested or (in)directly affiliated to any thought/action in relation to any group, individual, belief set, or independent vector that they disagree with. So “what” it is doesn’t matter until something comes along that again suggests/is affiliated with something they disagree with. There is no tolerance of thoughts or actions outside the ever shifting and morphing window of acceptance. On the note in your first paragraph with the hexidecimal reference, I will say I have noticed ironically (but not surprisingly) a strong degree of colorism/racial stereotyping if a character is darker BUT not dark enough in the eyes of the crusader of justice’s eyes that said character cannot qualify as a minority, the correct minority (say hispanic not being black), or good enough in a binary of more “melanin” as they like to say = more diverse and respectful… As well as a flagrant display of ignorance when it comes to the racial/ethnic/skin tone make up of various regions. And another ironic point is that asians are considered POC in the US for example, and ergo are not white. Which we see enmasse by a (hopefully only a) small minority that they cannot respect the actions/wishes/culture of a culture belonging to a group of people that are “POC” - chinese people. I do wish there was more conviction behind their faux activism as they would remove themselves from the player base which in turn improve the space for the remaining players… at least as far as the sheeple are concerned where as the consultant corpos could just disappear from the planet and the world would ever so slightly improve. But as you said, they will all for the most part come running back the moment a wonderful piece of advertisement or player made content which will be too alluring for them to resist 5.X and they’ll not only come back but spend and promote the game. Both CCs and players alike. Ironically the likely only true best solution for change is to spend more money lol, ie outspend chinese players by a considerable margin. As if players leave they A. Will not leave in a quantity significant enough for the devs to care B. Will reduce the amount of impact global has C obviously they will never spend money on things that actually align with them to make Hoyo consider that if they do x they will get significantly more money(assuming the CCP would even allow it, which they likely wouldn’t)
I agree with you, you can absolutely want more darker skinned characters, you can't demand it based on the argument of representation because it's a fictional world with various inspirations from real world cultures
I have seen people complaining more about this rather than the people from where the game takes inspiration to make the characters, for example let's took out Citlatli and Xilonen. People loved their design in the hispanic community because how they look are really pretty, doing some exceptions with people who had a girlfriend called "Citlali", after a breakup they talk trash about their ex gf's 😂It's funny to me how they can dislike someone already only because how it's called. People is free to be mad at the company but even being mad these people will roll to get this characters so?? at the end of the day what we have? Just a small portion of the community that doesn't really like the game how is it and just wan't their preference over others. So...??? Nobody it's getting harm in real life only because the company didn't added characters in their game based on skin color Nobody it's treated like their life means less than other because has a different skin color The company it's free to take inspiration from cultures over the world to make the game and if they decide to use or not use something they are free to do it, because this is not a 100% representative of how things used to be, and people seem to forgot one small but super small thing "It's only a game".
While I am personally disappointed by the artistic direction of Natlan, i respect it and Hoyo ultimately has the right to design characters however they want. I would, however, also extend this to historical fictions. Video games are art in my opinion and are allowed a certain level or artistic freedom even when heavily inspired by history.
I enjoy foreign games for a reason and hope that they continue to do as they please and ignore the weirdos. Just a vocal minority. I say this as an American with 0% european DNA/heritage.
This is the kind of thing that flows downstream from people (americans) who take themselves and their politics too seriously to appreciate a thing for what it is. I remember having this exact argument over sumeru in some zajef clip channel comment section that got completely deleted. The worst part of this kind of "representation" argument is that most of the people who support it also ironically can only appreciate "representation" at a surface level; literally skin deep. Diverse = dark Sumeru touches on a lot of different parts of SEA but also south asian and some arab(?) culture, but this is almost never brought up and there was always comparison to africa to justify dark skin colour because ????. Im guessing they had some desert=africa association. Very few people keep up with enough lore to actually be qualified to argue some kind of misrepresentation; even fewer of those people feel the need to have dumb twitter takes about it.
I think you hit a pretty good nail on the head here: Few people keep up enough with the lore to even draw all the connections to what was inspired, how it was changed and how it plays out against the backdrop of Genshin's wider story. It is then questionable how people can argue from a position of "but Hoyo just TAKES therefore more representation" without understanding how the content was transformed and the intention behind it. I also feel like some other obvious things are ignored like the positives coming from Genshin: They obviously have to consult (and pay) experts in some of the field areas, pay muscians to play, compose, provide input, etc., work with localisation teams and set up offices, etc. Just the project itself does a lot by investing money into actual people as part of the creation process. It would be sad if Hoyo stopped this and just created bland sci-fi worlds with no inspiration.
I don't really find representation(which we do get on other games sometimes) really important to me in any game. I dont get this expectation that devs are obligated to add representation. From what I've seen on the trailer though its not really true that the characters were predominantly pale too, if I remember correctly it was only Kinich, Citlali, Chasca and Mavuika that were pale-skinned. I dont even think that Natlan is the region that should have had more dark-skinned characters based on their inspiration, I think Sumeru on the desert regions make more sense. I think the biggest issue about these kinds of topic anyways is if the cultures/countries/regions represented are being intentionally disrespected just as how Ubisoft is handling AC Shadows, its mainly about the intention.
It definitely is about intention, although I would, as in the video, also add in the "degree of borrowing" to that. In other words, the more your lore is based on factual details and the more you intend to use those, the more an expectation should be given to include a degree of representation (which is not necessarily, but is sufficiently, given by skin color). Let's do a deepdive example: Take the new character Ororun from the Natlan teaser. Without any context or indications otherwise, we have ZERO knowledge of the character and so the question of representation is foggy. We could claim that the name is a variant on Olorun as many people assume: Origin: African Meaning: Owner; Lord of heaven "Boasting deep Yoruban roots, the name Olorun is truly reserved for babies who possess an almighty spirit. Typically masculine, the meaning of Olorun is “owner” or “lord of heaven.” It is a variant of the name Ọlọrun which is borne by the ruler of the heavens in the Yoruba religion and the creator of the universe and all living things. Ọlọrun is often regarded as compassionate and protective, encouraging baby to always be conscious of others and lend a helping hand. Undoubtedly, with a name like Olorun, baby will accomplish great things." (see www.thebump.com/b/olorun-baby-name ) [Notice the different spelling and accent marks: Ọ] From this, assuming this is what Genshin took inspiration from, we are unlikely to portray a deity in game and would rather associate the name of the character to have signficance with regards to character traits like being "compassionate" or someone with "almighty spirit". But, without knowing that actual lore we can't say much beyond speculation. And this where people think that just because a variant on a name for a Nigerian god is being used that somehow Genshin "stole without representation". But in all honesty that seems like a major stretch since so little is borrowed and we don't even know how it was re-interpreted to fit the story of Natlan (which is highly unlikely to have anything to do with the Yoruba religion). With very little borrowed (except ambigiously) a name, and without proof of ill-intent, I see no grounds for demanding any representation of any kind a priori.
@@KokomiClan Oh yeah, great expansion on the topic there... True, the amount of borrowing/level of inspiration used for the character do require some scrutiny for how to depict the character, that would also affect the discussion on Yasuke, although from what I've heard the devs for AC were so insistent on saying "historically" which says that they think are supposedly fully depicting a reference character accurately. I guess it does play on whether or not genshin is simply inspired or explicitly represent a nation(which they don't). The way genshin uses names are quite intricate(similar sounding names are sometimes used as inspiration for one character despite the two names not being related to each other besides sounding similar) based on what I've watched from Ashikai's lore vids lol, so maybe it really is just a loose inpiration?
1. You said something about the Japanese videogame being black washed where you play as a black samurai. That is not true. While the majority of Japan harbors white people the ancestors in regions closer to the equator were in fact black. But was the samurai you can play black? If we look at the depiction and description of him that we have, it is believed that he was in fact black. It is just due to the depiction in various media people assume Japanese people have a yellow to white skin color (which is true for cities and the majority). 2. Genshins development team themself talked about how certain regions, characters, cultures are inspired by certain real live regions, cultures and stories. Natlan is believed to be inspired by Australia or the Ring of Fire (which includes parts of Australia). However if you look deeper into the lore we have it isn't only associated geographically but also of certain events of the area are inspiration for the story so far (mainly because they use fictional stories of said region). But as I said currently we have no confirmation what the exact region is so we can't conclude the specific fantasy stories referenced and therefore can't tell if there is any color washing (even though black and white aren't colors). 3. While you say discrimination in fantasy doesn't have any RL consequences it is not the reality I got familiar with. As a German, we learned in history class that discrimination against jewish people started with fictional depictions of non-existent characters in fictional scenarios and stories. As genshin is inspired by fictional stories from the past, we need to accept that humanity's history was full of drugs slaves and other horrible things (and still is). However it doesn't mean we need to write our fiction just as dark as the real deal. 4. However I would like more color representation in the game, we have like 6 dark toned characters (not counting arlechino as she burned herself like inazumas ashes) out of 80 (and only rosaria with no color). Just looking at Germany, it is not accurate with real life even if we look back at history. But I don't believe that genshin is r*cist or intentionally misrepresenting color in-game. It just so happens that the majority of preserved history was recorded by and about white people.
I will give some brief responses: 1.) The Japanese government themselves are investigating Assasin Creed over misrepresentation: screenrant.com/assassins-creed-shadows-japanese-government-investigation-controversy/ That is a serious issue. For the rest of your points, I don't think you quite followed what I said in the video. But TLDR is that the standard for demanding "there must be representation" differs from a game based on actual history vs a fictional inspiration. In Genshin's defense, since day one, you accepted the ToS where it states that you acknowledge this is a work of fiction and does NOT represent real people, events, etc. So you can't demand anything. It would be equivalemt of me showing an image of a character, with just a name "Michael" and someone shouting, "why isn't he white?". You'd think they are being unreasonable. However, if I told the story of say Michael. J.W. MadeUpSurname who is an indian person and I portrayed them as an asian, then we have problems. That said, as pointed out in the video, you are free to express the desire for the type of content you want to see, including more dark tonned skin characters. Then it is up to the devs to decide what they want to do. If they see feedback presented in a decent manner, i.e. NOT twitter shout matches, then there is always a chance.
im glad that even va's are stepping up and saying something this time
the first thing you said, that genshin isn't using exact real places or people but takes just inspiration from reality... I tried to explain that to some scaramouche fans at twitter in an argument like a year ago and I recieved insane amounts of hate. Most of the fandom is really idiot (they're american kids after all) and they can't comprehend this. you can get a lot of hate for just saying that. ( just to be clear: as someone from middle-east, i don't like how hoyo didn't release brown or black characters neither in natlan or sumeru. I want black characters too.)
East Asian here, I have been called the R word for telling them to shutup it's Fantasy, when they shared a boycott genshin post (facepalm).
@@ChiyoTachi That thing won't do anything more than show how people doesn't like the game, something like that happened last year on the hispanic community called "Unfunaversary".
I'm surprised that people who feel strongly about the lack of representation are still playing Genshin. There was a lot of conversation about this when Sumeru came out. There were grumblings about it during Liyue and Inazuma. After several community discussions, almost four years, and only a few darker skinned characters being released, I think it's clear nothing will really change. So I'm surprised that people who find this a deal breaker have stuck around this long.
Edit: I'd love to see more dark skinned characters (and wider variety in character models in general). I'm simply of the mindset that after Genshin's obvious track record it's probably not going to happen.
People just can't stop playing the game which is exactly the reason why Mihoyo won't change anything
This is the most logical evaluation i’ve heard from a content creator. I was curious what your conclusion would be when going into the video and was not disappointed as everything checks out. The logic is consistent, the ethical/moral implications that follow naturally fall in alignment as they have a solid bases of reasoning to be built on. Which is not surprising or out of the blue because I’ve found your viewpoints to always be grounded, reasonable, and well thought out.
I think the only thing to add is how China/Chinese people on average operate, how their beliefs/ideals/practices will not always align with your(who ever reading) nation/region’s ideas. I mean people ‘could’ try to force them to comply but that’s likely going to yield no results or negative results at worst rather than any hope of a “positive” change that’s only positive from the aggressor’s perspective and worldview.
I’d be fine if they were whatever color they came out as or don’t come out as. It’s fiction, there’s no claim for accuracy, literally all made up.
Also motivation for change is important. HSR has a lot of quote “boss babes” and they are beloved characters because there’s not a woke/feminist idealogical push behind them that more often than not yields an insufferable result. The same applies for tokenism and/or forced diversity for sake of diversity/social brownie points/investment money from dubious megacorps.
Also it’s sad this gets a bigger stink than something tangible and would make more sense to be upset about like china’s extermination endeavors… but hey, priorities amirite?
Thanks for the comments, appreciate it^^
Yeah, I thought that it was odd that people claimed "more representation" but there was never any mention of how the lines should be drawn: Is there a "quota" on the nr of characters, how should they be represented, what skin tone color in hexidecimals would make it feel "represented", how do you meaningfully distinguish between people of different dark skin tones in a stylised anime game, etc.
Nobody engaged in these discussions and yet it is crucial. From questioning these ideas, I reasoned that if you create a fictional setting which is based off of history and present it as a factual retelling (i.e. Assassin creed) then the boundaries of "do's and don'ts" are much clearer - i.e. you have a source. But for Genshin those boundaries are very loose due to it advertising itself as "high fantasy" arpg with an explicit ToS since day one that "nothing is related to actual events, people, etc.". This means the "source" is Genshin themselves and that you can't really "whitewash" a character that was never of a particular skin tone to begin with.
So to your point in the second last paragraph, I also found issue with the Genshin boycott in that they seem to demand diversity/inclusion/equity/transformation (DIET police xD) from Hoyo and want to define the boundaries of "do's and don'ts" themselves. That screams of opportunism from a dubious megacorp (like Sweet Baby Inc). It seemed very coordinated, especially with the VA's and the petition going up.
Anyhow, I do think that once 5.0 drops and the story gets going that people will forget about this. A lot of "critical" Genshin CC's need their pay day, so they will come back.
@@KokomiClan well it’s a love of diversity and inclusion…….… until it’s suggested or (in)directly affiliated to any thought/action in relation to any group, individual, belief set, or independent vector that they disagree with. So “what” it is doesn’t matter until something comes along that again suggests/is affiliated with something they disagree with. There is no tolerance of thoughts or actions outside the ever shifting and morphing window of acceptance.
On the note in your first paragraph with the hexidecimal reference, I will say I have noticed ironically (but not surprisingly) a strong degree of colorism/racial stereotyping if a character is darker BUT not dark enough in the eyes of the crusader of justice’s eyes that said character cannot qualify as a minority, the correct minority (say hispanic not being black), or good enough in a binary of more “melanin” as they like to say = more diverse and respectful… As well as a flagrant display of ignorance when it comes to the racial/ethnic/skin tone make up of various regions.
And another ironic point is that asians are considered POC in the US for example, and ergo are not white. Which we see enmasse by a (hopefully only a) small minority that they cannot respect the actions/wishes/culture of a culture belonging to a group of people that are “POC” - chinese people.
I do wish there was more conviction behind their faux activism as they would remove themselves from the player base which in turn improve the space for the remaining players… at least as far as the sheeple are concerned where as the consultant corpos could just disappear from the planet and the world would ever so slightly improve. But as you said, they will all for the most part come running back the moment a wonderful piece of advertisement or player made content which will be too alluring for them to resist 5.X and they’ll not only come back but spend and promote the game. Both CCs and players alike.
Ironically the likely only true best solution for change is to spend more money lol, ie outspend chinese players by a considerable margin. As if players leave they A. Will not leave in a quantity significant enough for the devs to care B. Will reduce the amount of impact global has C obviously they will never spend money on things that actually align with them to make Hoyo consider that if they do x they will get significantly more money(assuming the CCP would even allow it, which they likely wouldn’t)
I agree with you, you can absolutely want more darker skinned characters, you can't demand it based on the argument of representation because it's a fictional world with various inspirations from real world cultures
I have seen people complaining more about this rather than the people from where the game takes inspiration to make the characters, for example let's took out Citlatli and Xilonen.
People loved their design in the hispanic community because how they look are really pretty, doing some exceptions with people who had a girlfriend called "Citlali", after a breakup they talk trash about their ex gf's 😂It's funny to me how they can dislike someone already only because how it's called.
People is free to be mad at the company but even being mad these people will roll to get this characters so?? at the end of the day what we have? Just a small portion of the community that doesn't really like the game how is it and just wan't their preference over others.
So...???
Nobody it's getting harm in real life only because the company didn't added characters in their game based on skin color
Nobody it's treated like their life means less than other because has a different skin color
The company it's free to take inspiration from cultures over the world to make the game and if they decide to use or not use something they are free to do it, because this is not a 100% representative of how things used to be, and people seem to forgot one small but super small thing "It's only a game".
While I am personally disappointed by the artistic direction of Natlan, i respect it and Hoyo ultimately has the right to design characters however they want. I would, however, also extend this to historical fictions. Video games are art in my opinion and are allowed a certain level or artistic freedom even when heavily inspired by history.
I enjoy foreign games for a reason and hope that they continue to do as they please and ignore the weirdos. Just a vocal minority. I say this as an American with 0% european DNA/heritage.
This is the kind of thing that flows downstream from people (americans) who take themselves and their politics too seriously to appreciate a thing for what it is.
I remember having this exact argument over sumeru in some zajef clip channel comment section that got completely deleted.
The worst part of this kind of "representation" argument is that most of the people who support it also ironically can only appreciate "representation" at a surface level; literally skin deep. Diverse = dark
Sumeru touches on a lot of different parts of SEA but also south asian and some arab(?) culture, but this is almost never brought up and there was always comparison to africa to justify dark skin colour because ????. Im guessing they had some desert=africa association.
Very few people keep up with enough lore to actually be qualified to argue some kind of misrepresentation; even fewer of those people feel the need to have dumb twitter takes about it.
I think you hit a pretty good nail on the head here: Few people keep up enough with the lore to even draw all the connections to what was inspired, how it was changed and how it plays out against the backdrop of Genshin's wider story.
It is then questionable how people can argue from a position of "but Hoyo just TAKES therefore more representation" without understanding how the content was transformed and the intention behind it.
I also feel like some other obvious things are ignored like the positives coming from Genshin: They obviously have to consult (and pay) experts in some of the field areas, pay muscians to play, compose, provide input, etc., work with localisation teams and set up offices, etc.
Just the project itself does a lot by investing money into actual people as part of the creation process. It would be sad if Hoyo stopped this and just created bland sci-fi worlds with no inspiration.
I don't really find representation(which we do get on other games sometimes) really important to me in any game. I dont get this expectation that devs are obligated to add representation.
From what I've seen on the trailer though its not really true that the characters were predominantly pale too, if I remember correctly it was only Kinich, Citlali, Chasca and Mavuika that were pale-skinned. I dont even think that Natlan is the region that should have had more dark-skinned characters based on their inspiration, I think Sumeru on the desert regions make more sense.
I think the biggest issue about these kinds of topic anyways is if the cultures/countries/regions represented are being intentionally disrespected just as how Ubisoft is handling AC Shadows, its mainly about the intention.
It definitely is about intention, although I would, as in the video, also add in the "degree of borrowing" to that. In other words, the more your lore is based on factual details and the more you intend to use those, the more an expectation should be given to include a degree of representation (which is not necessarily, but is sufficiently, given by skin color). Let's do a deepdive example: Take the new character Ororun from the Natlan teaser. Without any context or indications otherwise, we have ZERO knowledge of the character and so the question of representation is foggy. We could claim that the name is a variant on Olorun as many people assume:
Origin: African
Meaning: Owner; Lord of heaven
"Boasting deep Yoruban roots, the name Olorun is truly reserved for babies who possess an almighty spirit. Typically masculine, the meaning of Olorun is “owner” or “lord of heaven.” It is a variant of the name Ọlọrun which is borne by the ruler of the heavens in the Yoruba religion and the creator of the universe and all living things. Ọlọrun is often regarded as compassionate and protective, encouraging baby to always be conscious of others and lend a helping hand. Undoubtedly, with a name like Olorun, baby will accomplish great things." (see www.thebump.com/b/olorun-baby-name ) [Notice the different spelling and accent marks: Ọ]
From this, assuming this is what Genshin took inspiration from, we are unlikely to portray a deity in game and would rather associate the name of the character to have signficance with regards to character traits like being "compassionate" or someone with "almighty spirit". But, without knowing that actual lore we can't say much beyond speculation. And this where people think that just because a variant on a name for a Nigerian god is being used that somehow Genshin "stole without representation". But in all honesty that seems like a major stretch since so little is borrowed and we don't even know how it was re-interpreted to fit the story of Natlan (which is highly unlikely to have anything to do with the Yoruba religion).
With very little borrowed (except ambigiously) a name, and without proof of ill-intent, I see no grounds for demanding any representation of any kind a priori.
@@KokomiClan Oh yeah, great expansion on the topic there... True, the amount of borrowing/level of inspiration used for the character do require some scrutiny for how to depict the character, that would also affect the discussion on Yasuke, although from what I've heard the devs for AC were so insistent on saying "historically" which says that they think are supposedly fully depicting a reference character accurately.
I guess it does play on whether or not genshin is simply inspired or explicitly represent a nation(which they don't). The way genshin uses names are quite intricate(similar sounding names are sometimes used as inspiration for one character despite the two names not being related to each other besides sounding similar) based on what I've watched from Ashikai's lore vids lol, so maybe it really is just a loose inpiration?
Based as always 💯
1. You said something about the Japanese videogame being black washed where you play as a black samurai. That is not true. While the majority of Japan harbors white people the ancestors in regions closer to the equator were in fact black. But was the samurai you can play black? If we look at the depiction and description of him that we have, it is believed that he was in fact black. It is just due to the depiction in various media people assume Japanese people have a yellow to white skin color (which is true for cities and the majority).
2. Genshins development team themself talked about how certain regions, characters, cultures are inspired by certain real live regions, cultures and stories.
Natlan is believed to be inspired by Australia or the Ring of Fire (which includes parts of Australia). However if you look deeper into the lore we have it isn't only associated geographically but also of certain events of the area are inspiration for the story so far (mainly because they use fictional stories of said region). But as I said currently we have no confirmation what the exact region is so we can't conclude the specific fantasy stories referenced and therefore can't tell if there is any color washing (even though black and white aren't colors).
3. While you say discrimination in fantasy doesn't have any RL consequences it is not the reality I got familiar with. As a German, we learned in history class that discrimination against jewish people started with fictional depictions of non-existent characters in fictional scenarios and stories. As genshin is inspired by fictional stories from the past, we need to accept that humanity's history was full of drugs slaves and other horrible things (and still is). However it doesn't mean we need to write our fiction just as dark as the real deal.
4. However I would like more color representation in the game, we have like 6 dark toned characters (not counting arlechino as she burned herself like inazumas ashes) out of 80 (and only rosaria with no color). Just looking at Germany, it is not accurate with real life even if we look back at history. But I don't believe that genshin is r*cist or intentionally misrepresenting color in-game. It just so happens that the majority of preserved history was recorded by and about white people.
I will give some brief responses:
1.) The Japanese government themselves are investigating Assasin Creed over misrepresentation: screenrant.com/assassins-creed-shadows-japanese-government-investigation-controversy/
That is a serious issue.
For the rest of your points, I don't think you quite followed what I said in the video. But TLDR is that the standard for demanding "there must be representation" differs from a game based on actual history vs a fictional inspiration. In Genshin's defense, since day one, you accepted the ToS where it states that you acknowledge this is a work of fiction and does NOT represent real people, events, etc. So you can't demand anything.
It would be equivalemt of me showing an image of a character, with just a name "Michael" and someone shouting, "why isn't he white?". You'd think they are being unreasonable. However, if I told the story of say Michael. J.W. MadeUpSurname who is an indian person and I portrayed them as an asian, then we have problems.
That said, as pointed out in the video, you are free to express the desire for the type of content you want to see, including more dark tonned skin characters. Then it is up to the devs to decide what they want to do. If they see feedback presented in a decent manner, i.e. NOT twitter shout matches, then there is always a chance.