You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why is Zangief a red-wearing soviet musclehead who likes borscht and calls everyone “comrade”? Why are all the American characters blonde white guys, who are involved in the military, arrogant douchebags, or a really fat arrogant douchebag? Why does Fuerte keep talking about tortillas, quesadillas and burritos? Why is T. Hawk a native with feathers in his cap who talks about totems and goes “HAOW” and has a pet hawk? Why is Elena obsessed with animals and nature, and Dudley obsessed with tea? There’s a level of stereotype to ALL the characters in SF. My character is actually less of a stereotype in comparison, unless you’re deliberately imagining her as a comedy “fat and ugly” heavyweight girl, which is something only shitty western devs do, and not what I’m envisioning at all. Capcom is a Japanese company, they design all their girls according to what they like about girls. There isn’t a single girl in the entire SF universe that they deliberately made unattractive, I don’t see why they’d start here. Besides, Capcom already has an attractive heavyweight girl in the SF universe, which is B. Widow from Slammasters 2. That was the bodytype I imagined my character having, except with longer hair. So really your conclusion about it being an uninspired design is baseless and stupid since she only exists in concept at the moment anyways and you applied a “western studio” way of thinking to it.
As someone who was born and raised in Canada I don’t think of a lumberjack as being an offensive stereotype at all, and a “lumberjill” even less so since those are practically unheard of. Most people don’t even know there’s a term for a female lumberjack. Instead of an offensive thing I see it as a prideful representation of Canada. I don’t know if you’re aware but there’s quite a lot of nature here, and some of the stereotypes ring true about us; we DO love drinking, we do love hockey, we have a lot of lumber which we get a lot of use out of, we like the cold, we love maple syrup and we do a lot of oil-related work. In any case, it’s mostly an origin story, and an excuse to give her that awesome log rolling move which I take a lot of pride in.
Because he sucks. El Fuerte is a failure of a character.
That’s still a very VERY little detail, Dudley’s not exactly your stereotype of an English man, that would be Eagle, maybe.
I see it like this:
Street Fighter I = Bland stereotypes.
Street Fighter II = Hugely exaggerated and colorful stereotypes, only with really unique and attractive designs gimmicks.
Street Fighter 0 = Anime and mostly unique designs
Street Fighter III = Exotic and unique designs with some little anime inspirations (I’m looking at you, Q, Yun, Yang, Gill…)
Street Fighter IV = Weird and grotesque designs (in one way or another) mainly (Abel and C. Viper are exceptions, Juri’s really over the top, the rest are horrible)
Take Street Fighter III for example, Oro is not your stereotypical Brazilian, Remy and Abel are not your stereotypical French men, Elena is not your stereotypical African girl, and at some extent they just stopped caring about nationality representations.
It’s still the most boring representation of a Canadian stereotype, and Canadian fighters are for sure nothing alike. Lumberjacking is not a martial art.
Better look at what Dead or Alive did with their Canadian boxing man, a character doesn’t have to be an stereotype to represent a country.
Lumberjacks still make nothing sense. I like Mexico and a Mexican high flyer luchador makes sense since it’s a martial art (even when the food references are so offensive and idiotique, but let’s face it, that’s what Japan likes about Mexico, the food), but they wouldn’t add a Mexican charro fighter wearing a sombrero and fighting with a Mariachi guitar.
A colorful and cartoony character like that can work in a “festival” game like the MvC series, but not on Street Fighter.
If there is a canadian fighter it better not be a lumberjack type…oh please no. I don’t know how they would do it but no reference to igloo’s, lumberjacks or any…“old” Canadian stereotype. Ours are just bad…
Or if it turns out to be true…Juri could use a new punching bag…and I wouldn’t mind seeing her wipe the floor with me…I mean “ahem”… “us”.
Again, if we’re judging characters based on how stereotypical they are, mine is no more stereotypical than Elena (who is a dancing tribal princess that talks to rhinos and elephants, I should remind you). And I quite clearly said my character’s fighting style is based on okichitaw and strength athletics, not “lumberjacking” as if it’s a martial art. That’s just a failure of reading comprehension on your part. The fact that I came up with two moves for her regarding her that are loosely related to lumberjacking (when they’re actually just clever subversions of stereotypes) is not indicative of her as a whole, because there’s still a whole movelist to fill up with other styles of moves. Also, caber tossing isn’t even a Canadian thing, it’s from Scotland.
You just straight up admitted that lot of the characters are stereotypes, going against your earlier sentiment that they “aren’t stereotypical to this extent”. Even SF3 has characters designed with stereotypes in mind, like Alex, Elena, Dudley, Sean and the Lee twins. They’re LESS stereotypical than what they had before, but they’re still stereotypical. I don’t really care about that though, as long as it results in characters that are interesting. My character is not such a stereotype, I’m not gonna have her wearing a toque and gargling maple syrup. She just works in a milling facility, which is actually quite common around here, and has some moves inspired by it.
Street Fighter isn’t about colorful characters? That’s nonsense, get the fuck out of here. If it didn’t have a colorful cast then the roster would be full of bland, boring losers like Mike and Joe from SF1.
That’s even MORE fucking boring. What’s the point? Boxing does not have anything to do with Canada, so now you have a character who doesn’t even have anything based on their Canadian heritage, which means the character might as well be from anywhere. There’s no point in saying he’s from Canada. Street Fighter ALWAYS manifests some representation of the characters’ homes when they design them. They don’t just randomly make a character and say “oh he’s from South America or something”. There’s always a tie-in to their heritage.
Her personality still has absolutely nothing to do with what people think about African people.
Still the most boring I’ve ever heard.
Nah, I don’t think they’re stereotypical at all, there’s a huge difference between having some air from a country and being a stereotype.
There’s a huge difference between “colorful” and “straight from a kids coloring book”.
I just read your idea of a character and I think in the boar girl from Bloody Roar, and that sucks and doesn’t belong to Street Fighter.
That’s exactly the idea, a character DOES NOT necessarily have to look like your stereotypical idea of people from some country. KOF for example, Angel is not your stereotypical Mexican girl and they LOVE her in Mexico. Because with her they dared to break the tradition.
Take Elena, is Capoeira an African martial art? Not at all. I’m sure if you were you would give her some voodoo powers or something.
Do skateboarding and rollerskates have something to do with China? Nope. But they gave that to Yun and Yang simply to make them unique, the fact they wear Chinese shirts doesn’t make them stereotypes.
Does Necro looks Russian to you?
Street Fighter itself is sick of stereotypes, and if they’re bringing a Canadian character for first time to the franchise, I don’t want it to be a lumberjack.
Russian wrestler? OK, made sense, specially since they based him on a real person.
Military American? Made sense, militar boxing exists.
Dhalsim? Stretching arms is not really an Indian stereotype, but thanks to that he became a unique character.
But look at Claw, for example, a Spanish mix between a ninja and a matador, much more than a stereotype. Look at Cammy. Look at Rose. That’s what Street Fighter is about. Who the hell has true respect for T. Hawk, or Dee Jay, as character designs? No one, really.
Are you kidding? The idea behind her reaches 1940’s propaganda sort of stereotyping.
I disagree, and don’t really care what you think.
This statement makes no sense at all. Where, in a kids coloring book, would you ever find any of these characters, mine in particular? I don’t understand.
Then don’t think of that character. Why would you think of a Bloody Roar character in Street Fighter? That also makes no sense.
Okay. Where did I say anything about what my character looked like? You just automatically jumped to a conclusion that it “looked like” a stereotypical image of a Canadian, which… I don’t even know what that looks like, if one exists. You’re basing this all on the fact that I mentioned she worked as a lumberjill, and nothing more. I think you might be the one with stereotypes ingrained in your psyche. Contrary to what you believe not all of them have a specific “look” to them.
Ahem…
Another place where you’re wrong. You were saying?
I was referring more to the fact that they’re both kung fu movie stereotypes and their names are literally “Yin and Yang” but okay whatever.
The game is “sick of stereotypes” even though the latest game brought back all of the stereotyped characters and even made new ones like Hakan, Fuerte and Rufus. Okay then.
And again, you’re basing this all on your ignorant assumptions of what I intended for my character idea instead of what I actually intended. You personally believe that I intended for her to be some of stereotype like T. Hawk or Dee Jay simply because I mentioned her occupation. This whole time you’ve been talking out of your ass because of a personal image you have about Canadians instead of what was actually insinuated. You’ve been exposed as an idiot, thanks for playing.
Batsu won’t be added because Rival Schools isn’t part of the Street Fighter shared universe (Street Fighter, Final Fight, Captain Commando). And before you bring it up, Sakura was only a guest character in the PS1 version.
You mean a Mexican high flyer isn´t stereotypical? Lucha Libre also contains a lot of mat based wrestling or brawling, not only high flying action.
You know, why we have this image of “Mexican high flyer luchadors”? It is because, the American promotions specifically signed smaller luchadores to show matches with a lot of highspots.( Definition:“Highspot (n) A move, usually aerial, that includes fast motion among two or more wrestlers; often risk is involved or at least perceived.”) http://www.pwtorch.com/insiderglossary.shtml
He is a dude, who thinks that Turkey is a 3rd world cesspool and that families there have a lot children(See at Hakan and his 7 kids). Also that the people of Cuba want to be liberated by the US. I mean, we all are able to say extremely dumb stuff, but the opinion about Turkey and Cuba is just pure ignorance.
IDK why Magegg is being so judgemental and up tight about stereotypes. Most of his arguments come from his own assumptions and nothing to do with what the other guy said. Stereotypes aren’t bad by default, as the old saying goes “stereotypes exist for a reason”. What’s so bad about using a few positive stereotypes here and there for a character? Wouldn’t a Canadian gamer be happy to see themselves represented in Street Fighter? Sure a full blown stereotype like T.Hawk or Dee Jay would suck, but I think having a stereotype for a base then adding some flare to the character I.E Yang, Yun, Ken ( yeah I said Ken ) would be great. That what the Lumber Jack lady sounds like.
I’m just gonna say the notion that DOA having a Boxer from Canada is stupid because “what does Boxing have to do with Canada?” is a pretty dumb line of reasoning. It’s cool because he’s from Canada so it’s nice to see us represented, and since we’re not much different from the US or the UK…if they can have boxing types, why not?
And really, C.Viper would be something seen as weirder than a Boxer from Canada since you’d kind of expect a spy thing to be from like the UK because the most famous fictional spy is James Bond, etc. Plus…I’m pretty sure the US doesn’t have a lot of people who resemble female versions of Reno from Final Fantasy VII.
Stereotypes are generally mass generalizations that only reinforce existing prejudices against a people, they’re usually bad and in all cases they’re a very lazy line of thinking.
However, there isn’t really anything too wrong with a stereotype for a character in a video game like SF, though I could be wrong on this one.
A lumberjack is the most stereotypical thing you can picture about Canadians, period.
Cause your description fits that character so much.
The fact Brazilians are African-descent doesn’t mean a Kenian should know Capoeira, that would be like saying Congolese people should be doing gangsta rap only because it was invented by African American.
The names are not enough to stereotype a character, man.
I don’t think neither Hakan, Fuerte or Rufus are stereotypes in the strict sense, while they take a couple cues from stereotypical ideas but they’re overall original inventions:
Hakan has a really stereotypical personality according to what people imagine of Middle Eastern men, but his design is completely original and has nothing to do with stereotyping.
Rufus is a mix between two or three completely different things, the idea of an overweight American is sort of an stereotype (not really seen in Japanese media often) but not when applied to fighting, he rides a motorcycle which is kind of a stereotype, then they give him a kung-fu fighting style and a costume vaguely inspired in Bruce Lee and more in common with Lien from KOF MI, then he’s far away from being a stereotype.
Fuerte I wouldn’t say he’s an stereotype simply because of being a luchador, that would be like saying a Korean TKD fighter is a stereotype. It might be an archetype and one that makes sense, one stupid stereotype would be Fuerte being a Mariachi fighter. His design is nothing special and the only truly stereotypical thing about him is his obsession with Mexican cuisine.
Anyway, those three characters are failures and they’re not much appreciated precisely because of the grotesque stereotypical details they gave him. That’s the reason why you shouldn’t be doing stereotypes anymore.
To create a cool character you must stay away from the cartoon coloring book stereotypes, you can take a couple gimmicks from different countries stereotype but they have to make sense. Why a lumberjack? That’s just as stereotypical as a mariachi for Mexico, and doesn’t make sense in the fighting context. What do you think is a cool design, Vega/Claw, or Laurence Blood from Fatal Fury 2?
They could start integrating it to the shared universe. Or at least a couple characters. If there was a version of Sakura in Rival Schools, why not alternate universe versions of characters like Akira, Kyosuke or Ryu could exist in the Street Fighter universe?
And that was why people didn’t like it. It was a terrible stereotype (specially because it has nothing to do with fighting) AND the execution was really grotesque. Look at Bob in Tekken, is basically the same idea, but without the “Capcomized” design style.
I think Street Fighter IV character designers have a chance to be good, as long as they stop basing their designs in grotesque stereotypes.
But then I look at the alternate costume designs and say “damn, there’s no way these guys can design something good…”
No stereotypes. I’m all up for colorful, exaggerated, larger than life depictions of people, but character designs don’t have to be rooted in BS generalizations of entire races, “positive” or negative.
I DEFINITELY wouldn’t mind a Jim Kelly homage, though.
What’s wrong with stereotypes? Balrog’s one of the most offensive stereotypes and I’m fine with it. He’s stupid, violent, and obsessed with money. Can’t get more stereotypical than that, and I love him for it. No offense to all the brothas out there lolololol.
It’s a little harder to understand the impact of anti-black stereotypes like that if you’re not a “brotha” yourself. Possible, just much harder.
Diversity of personality is what I’m really asking for. If greedy, stupid brutes like Balrog have to exist, fine. But give me more Dudleys (if he’s black) and Elenas (minus the noble savage traits, pls) to more than balance out the Balrogs, Mikes, and Birdies.
And don’t get me started on Deejay and Sean…
And for the record, the bolded applies to more than just the black characters.
I’m all up for colorful, exaggerated, larger than life depictions of people, but character designs don’t have to be rooted in BS generalizations of entire races, “positive” or negative.