Since the release of The Witcher 3, incredible amounts of virtual ink has been dedicated to it.
The game has recieved an incredibly positive response for the most part, praised for stellar world-building, excellent gameplay, and a frankly staggering amount of content.
On the other hand, it has also generated a huge controversy over issues of diversity and representation.
Outlets like Polygon and Forbes, personalities like Jim Sterling and the Feminist Frequency duo, as well as a slew of average gamers have thrown their $0,02 in.
Good arguments, bad arguments, strawman arguments, misrepresentations and outright lies abound.
Here, I’ll try to tackle some of the more common arguments, unhampered by the nuance-less nightmare that is Twitter.com, as well as try to expand on some points made by veteran game designer Adrian Chmielarz, who has come out strongly in defense of the title.
Disclaimer: This piece will involve minor spoilers from both The Witcher 3 and the series of books it’s based on. You have been warned.
Disclaimer no.2: I have no writing experience, so this might be difficult to slog through, please bear with me.
- Racial Diversity.
As noted by Polygon’s Arthur Gies, and Jim Sterling of The Jimquisition, The Witcher has a “glaring” lack of racial diversity.
The people populating the huge world you explore are by and large white, of markedly Slavic descent. There are a couple of reasons for this, both within the fictional universe, and without.
Firstly, the areas the game takes place in are Redania (which is basically Fantasy Poland), and Skellige (which is basically Fantasy Scandinavia).
The areas you visit are based (admittedly loosely) on real places, and real mythology. Poland, to this very day, is not exactly what you’d call racially diverse (at least not in terms of skin color), and it wasn’t in the 1200's, but more on that later.
In essence, the people in these areas are largely white, because they represent real areas, where the population is largely white.
That’s not to say that there aren’t non-white people in the Witcher universe. They’re called the Zerrikanians. The most prominent example of them in the games is the main antagonist of The Witcher 1, Azar Javed.
One could make the argument that there “should” be Zerrikanian characters in the Northern Kingdoms, but why would there be? Zerrikania is leagues away, and anyone traveling to, say, Novigrad, would be actively seeking out, and walking through the wartorn hellhole that is most of the north.
Feminist Frequency made the all too common argument of “Well it has Ghouls and Dragons, Elves and Dwarves, why not people of color?” to which the obvious answer is internal consistency.
The Elves and Dwarves have a very good reason to be there, the humans are squatting on their ancient homelands, and they have nowhere to go, while the potential non-white people have a very good reason not to be there.
The people who are in favor of adding more skin-colors to the game have also made the argument that presenting racial struggles and conflicts through fantasy races such as Elves and Dwarves is “not good enough”, to which my immediate reply would be: Why?
Since when is metaphor and allegory no longer good enough in fiction?
2. Representation and Sexism.
Complaints have also come from many angles about representation of female characters and other minorities, which frankly, I find even more strange than the racial complaints.
Arthur Gies, again, calls the game “Oppressively Misogynistic”, while Feminist Frequency reacts strongly to the use of gendered slurs thrown at the sometimes playable character Cirilla by her opponents.
The oppressively misogynistic bit has been called blatantly false by others before me, and I’m inclined to agree.
It’s true that the game showcases a lot of traditional gender-roles, and that a large amount of (male) characters make sexist remarks, but to say women are entirely oppressed in the Northern Kingdoms is a blatant falshehood, if you have any knowledge of the lore surrounding the game.
Up until the end of the second game, Assassin of Kings, the Northern Kingdoms were de facto ruled by the Lodge of Sorceresses. Before the Nilfgaardian incursion, Queen Callanthe (Ciri’s grandmother) reigned supreme over Cintra, while Meve ruled Rivia and Lyria. Francesca Findabair was the sovereign ruler of Dol Blathanna, the only Elven nation, while it was still “independent”.
And that’s just counting the women that rule nations.
Women in the Witcher universe can be anything, from innkeepers, to sorceresses, to mercenary captains, to special-forces operatives.
And we haven’t even talked about the character of Ciri herself, who is so powerful and competent that only good and nuanced writing by Sapkowski saves her from a complete Mary Sue status.
To call such a world “Oppressively Misogynistic” is a misnomer at best.
In part two of his critique of Feminist Frequency in regards to the Witcher, Chmielarz has this to say:
In case it’s not clear yet, yup, The Witcher 3 is one of the most feminist games ever created. It’s just that its story is told with respect for the sometimes harsh truths about our world. In other words, it’s a story for grown-ups.
And I’m inclined to agree with him.
Of course, it’s not a feminist game if you’re the type of Sex-Negative Radfem who believes that a plunging neckline and a sense of self-worth is mutually exclusive.
But if you’re an old-fashioned one, who believes in equality, and that a woman can be anything a man can be, for good or ill, that’s exactly what it is.
The games, and the books they’re based on, feature a plethora of strong, competent, complex and fleshed-out female characters, from all walks of life, several of whom are far more powerful than the player character, Geralt.
But, as Adrian notes, these have always been stories for grown-ups.
The Witcher shares at least one theme with George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series: Even in a world of literal monsters, human beings have the potential to be the worst monsters of all.
If this isn’t evident to you, go watch the first trailer that was released for the Witcher 3.
The story of the game goes places that, frankly, I have a hard time imagining western titles even dreaming of.
It tells tales of domestic abuse, homophobia, persecution and bigotry. But to say that it endorses these things are, again, a misnomer.
At a certain point in time, presenting something in a work of fiction became conflated with supporting it. The Witcher presents a lot of horrible things, but it makes it quite clear that it doesn’t condone any of it, it’s just not as overtly preaching as, say, Dragon Age: Inquisition is.
One of the first female characters of note in the game basically manipulates you into doing her dirty work, (potentially) uses you for sex, and abandons you.
One of the first male characters of note is a wife-beater who believes he caused his wifes miscarriage. At least in my game, he ended up hanging himself after realizing what a terrible person he was, and losing everything he cared about.
One of the first characters you meet overall is a hunter, exiled from his village for the simple act of loving another man, who ended up dying for the supposed “misdeed”.
All-in-all, the world of the Witcher is far from a utopia. It’s dark and often horrifying, and that’s part of the point.
People have complained over things like gendered slurs, claiming that they’re unneccesary, again because it’s fantasy, and they “don’t have to” be there. Again we come back to internal consistency.
While there are thousands of made-up fantasy world, one thing usually stays the same, and that’s human nature. The Witcher is a universe that looks to explore the darker sides of the human condition, and, as most of us know, sexism, racism, and other types of bigotry is a part of that.
To leave it out would be to sweep it under the rug, and would do a disservice to the work.
3. Amerocentrism.
This is the part where I put reasoned arguments to the side for a bit, mostly because this kind of makes my blood boil. As such, strong language might follow.
In his “The boy who cried White Wolf, part 2”, Chmielarz asks this:
So, to which audience should an AAA blockbuster like The Witcher 3 cater to? Why? Or maybe it’s not about catering to anybody and it’s all just about representing your own culture to the world? Is that okay? Is that always okay?
Now, bear in mind, The Witcher is a huge deal in Poland.
As far as I’m aware, it’s by far their most prominent cultural work in modern times. To put it in context, at the release of The Witcher 3, Poland’s Prime Minister visited CD Projekt Red to let them know that they’d made their country proud.
The Witcher might be the only work of fiction featuring Polish culture that will ever reach such a large, global audience.
Now, if you’d asked me if any fictional work has some sort of social responsibility, my answer would be something along the lines of: “No, that’s fucking stupid”, but it is especially egregious in this case.
American progressives love talking about oppression, and how this and that group are oppressed.
Now, if we take off our america-tinted glasses for a second, we might realize that the fall of the Berlin Wall was in 1989. Which means, that anyone in Poland above the age of 30, which I’m betting includes quite a few of the people working on the Witcher 3, have lived through worse oppression than any American alive today.
You’ve been given the opportunity to experience a culture different from your own, and you’ve chosen to shit all over it, yelling of racism and sexism, because a fantasy representation of medieval Poland doesn’t reflect the demographic reality of the contemporary United States, insulting both Polish culture, and all the hard-working people who developed the game.
For a group of people so opposed to American colonialism, and “Cultural Appropriation” this seems a bit strange, to say the least.
In the end, I’m left wondering this: How did we get to the point where fiction, and all the hard work that went into creating it, is somehow communally owned, rather than owned by the people who worked long and hard to create it?
What gives anyone the “right” to demand that they’re represented, especially when they’re not really present in the culture that birthed the artwork in the first place?
I’ve read about “White Male Gamer entitlement” more times than I can count, but the fact is, I’ve never once felt it was my right to go yell at, and throw accusations of bigotry, at the creators of say, Tales of Graces, because there weren’t enough Norwegian people in the game.
