Africa and South America are ignored...

Blond

We've had plenty of movies and game set in European and Asian context. Whether it's sci-fi, steampunk, historical or medieval settings, alot of artists have managed to create wonderful depictions of these 2 two cultures (and subcultures) in various productions. Sometimes, we have a few projects where we are set in oriental/arabic settings (inspired by 1001 nights stories) but after a tedious research, I've noticed how unexploited and undiscovered Panafrican settings (as in black africa) and South Amerindian universe were (we're talking about both precolumbian ,postcolonial and modern latino-america).

I wonder why.:(

I mean, do westerner artists think their culture are too far from them to be interested in picturing them(that'd be weird since both place have been heavily colonized by europeans) ?

Even artists rarely take the initiative to picture these places, I've been looking for some concept-art depicting said places and though, I've found a few, it's insanely low compared to asian/european inspired concept arts...

What a shame..we're the artists. We are the one supposed to take the first steps to do these things...

What do you think?

.nL

I'll probably get a lot wrong here, but here are my assumptions.

Generally a bad idea to build something on what you have little to no cultural awareness of. As fascinating as Africa and South America are, their slower development and histories of exploitation by more developed regions have made it difficult to parse between stereotype, actual culture/history in documents. You've basically got entire continents worth of countries and human development that western education systems generally give you little context on. South America barely even has a history right now. The conquistadors did such a good job of things that just about everything we think we know is either oral history, or what we can surmise from ruins (just compare the number of articles on any ancient Eurasian civilization to the number of articles on any Mesoamerican civilization at Wikipedia). Africa's not much better off, I don't think, in that respect.

And since you are dealing with heavily repressed regions, if you get anything too wrong, or make the wrong assumptions about something, there's a whole cadre of socially conscientious people out there willing to crawl up your ass and tear up your reputation from the inside out for your perceived racism or bias.

The safest bet is to build on contemporary Africa, or South America. But if you set a game in contemporary South America, or Africa, there's also just a lot of legwork needed to nail the cultural subtleties that makes the regions distinct from the rest of the world without going overboard. And once again, difficult without any real context to begin with.
If you really want to explore modern politics in the regions, you also need to look at facts about the world that your average American or European (I'm assuming here, as I'm an American) would probably very much like to ignore. They're the closets where the western world likes to keep a lot of its proverbial skeletons from the colonial era up to the cold war, and even (to a lesser extent) today.

North America, Eurasia, the Middle East, these are very much on the radar of anyone who watches the news. Creating a game or IP based around them (or even based on South America/Africa in the far future) is far easier to do, far easier to advertise, and far cheaper to get wrong.

Finalhart

I live in Peru, South America. I agree there a lot of subjects and unexplored themes to take form here, but these are 3rd world countries, it would surprise you how weird is to talk about "video game industry" here, it's really years behind compared any to other country where the industry makes some presence.

I remember that 3 years ago, EA came here to talk about their plans and they said they were going to stay 5 years in south america, and then move to Africa to improve the industry level. As far as i know, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil are pretty well compared to other countries, but there's a long way to go until they can create something with today's standards.

MagicSugar

Sounds like you guys have never played Age of Empires or Civilization.

.nL

I think strategy games can safely be considered exceptions to the rule. But their sweeping scale abstracts a lot of what makes each individual culture and history unique away. Civ has some nice blurbs at the beginning, and does a decent job of giving each civ a unique set of attributes and units, but not much more.

I like the way the old Guild Wars game and its expansions built their world on different real-world regions (Factions- East Asia , Nightfall - Africa, and the Middle East), but by being so broad, it could be argued that they made many mistakes in doing so.

Blaisoid

.nL said:

If you really want to explore modern politics in the regions, you also need to look at facts about the world that your average American or European (I'm assuming here, as I'm an American) would probably very much like to ignore. They're the closets where the western world likes to keep a lot of its proverbial skeletons from the colonial era up to the cold war, and even (to a lesser extent) today.

Yeah, but it's not just that. In african history you can find some of the most extreme examples of ethnic hatred and xenophobia that aren't really a result of foreign influence.
It also shows power and wealth can corrupt people who previously lived in poverty.

I've recently read some books by Ryszard Kapuściński.
I can't help but to get a bit depressed by things such as:
Opressed parts of society becoming opressors themselves, going on rampage and murdering thousands of people based on their ethnicity. (Worst example being the Rwanda genocide)
Recurring theme of former freedom fighters turning into cruel dictators that torture and kill anyone that could be a threat. And the fact that they often get killed by another revolutionary who ends up doing the very same thing that they had been doing.
Military that robs food from already starving villages.
Nomad tribes that raid villages (cos that's the way they lived for centuries) and in return get slaughtered by military.
Crime lords who notoriously intercept food and supplies that are being sent from other countries to help the poor.
Large scale conflicts where different tribes volunteer and join opposite armies just because it gives them a chance to slaughter the enemy tribes.
Countless war crimes, rape so notorious that it causes a spike in HIV infection...
Wars between islamic and non islamic africans.
etc etc etc.

It's an endless pile of shit.
Some of these things are old, some are from last 15 years. Many of those are still happening at this very moment.

Because of that I find it hard to imagine a good game plot that would work in north or central africa.
Even though i'd love to see a game with african feel. Maybe in fictional world, maybe in futuristic setting.

I think we had a similar topic, by the way.

iadagraca

People got up in arms over use of the term "Apartheid" which is just modern history.

All hope is not lost though, i read a story about some african game developers recently.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/20/africa/cameroon-video-game-fantasy-aurion/

All this sort of thing needs is a proper foundation for others to copy and build off of, to say "this is cool and i wanna do that too" or "this is ok but ithink i can do it better".

After all the main reason the amount of art for those other cultures is so large is mainstream appeal and interest those cultures built on their own and have a long history with. Not everything catches on mainstream (like Bollywood style stuff) but there's always hope as the history and quality grows, eventually someone will find a thing that takes it from cult following to world wide hit.

Maybe that black panther movie will spark some more interest in the cultures potential.

Blaisoid said:

Yeah, but it's not just that. In african history you can find some of the most extreme examples of ethnic hatred and xenophobia that aren't really a result of foreign influence.
It also shows power and wealth can corrupt people who previously lived in poverty.

Yeah thats a thing, you'll find plenty of shows and movies about that but not really fantasy stuff based on the culture. 

Now that i think about it, doesn't the Far Cry series use a lot of this stuff? Or is that something else?

Hito

"Unexploited", with all that that word implies, is good. Help them develope the skills and tools so they can make their own games and tell their own stories. like "The Fast Runner" and "Never Alone".

Why it isn't as prevelant in western entertainment is simple, it doesn't make money. Take two films as example: The Last Samurai and 47 Ronin. Both have similar run times; budget; release around same time of the year; and take place in Japan. The Last Samurai is a pure western film set in Japanese culture, with a western protagonist; opening weekend gross of 24 million @ #1. 47 Ronin is a rather faithful adaption of the source material with western fantasy elements attached, with a japanese protagonist (not Keanu Reeves as it would appear); opening weekend gross of just under 10 million, @ #9. 

Shrike

"We've had plenty of movies and game set in European and Asian context."
Pretty much all those Movies and Games are from European, Asian or American creators, thats why you see those things so often, thats all there is to it.

ArtisticTiger

iadagraca said:

People got up in arms over use of the term "Apartheid" which is just modern history.

All hope is not lost though, i read a story about some african game developers recently.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/20/africa/cameroon-video-game-fantasy-aurion/

All this sort of thing needs is a proper foundation for others to copy and build off of, to say "this is cool and i wanna do that too" or "this is ok but ithink i can do it better".

After all the main reason the amount of art for those other cultures is so large is mainstream appeal and interest those cultures built on their own and have a long history with. Not everything catches on mainstream (like Bollywood style stuff) but there's always hope as the history and quality grows, eventually someone will find a thing that takes it from cult following to world wide hit.

I've been following those developers for a while now, really have my interest peaked. But anyway, yeah eventually i feel we'll start to see more and more cultures becoming mainstream(not in the negative stereotype way) but you know what i mean. Like that upcoming animated film "Bilal" and the "Aurion" game.

Blond

Blaisoid said:

.nL said:

If you really want to explore modern politics in the regions, you also need to look at facts about the world that your average American or European (I'm assuming here, as I'm an American) would probably very much like to ignore. They're the closets where the western world likes to keep a lot of its proverbial skeletons from the colonial era up to the cold war, and even (to a lesser extent) today.

Yeah, but it's not just that. In african history you can find some of the most extreme examples of ethnic hatred and xenophobia that aren't really a result of foreign influence.
It also shows power and wealth can corrupt people who previously lived in poverty.

I've recently read some books by Ryszard Kapuściński.
I can't help but to get a bit depressed by things such as:
Opressed parts of society becoming opressors themselves, going on rampage and murdering thousands of people based on their ethnicity. (Worst example being the Rwanda genocide)
Recurring theme of former freedom fighters turning into cruel dictators that torture and kill anyone that could be a threat. And the fact that they often get killed by another revolutionary who ends up doing the very same thing that they had been doing.
Military that robs food from already starving villages.
Nomad tribes that raid villages (cos that's the way they lived for centuries) and in return get slaughtered by military.
Crime lords who notoriously intercept food and supplies that are being sent from other countries to help the poor.
Large scale conflicts where different tribes volunteer and join opposite armies just because it gives them a chance to slaughter the enemy tribes.
Countless war crimes, rape so notorious that it causes a spike in HIV infection...
Wars between islamic and non islamic africans.
etc etc etc.

It's an endless pile of shit.
Some of these things are old, some are from last 15 years. Many of those are still happening at this very moment.

Because of that I find it hard to imagine a good game plot that would work in north or central africa.
Even though i'd love to see a game with african feel. Maybe in fictional world, maybe in futuristic setting.

I think we had a similar topic, by the way.

Nice to read so many good answers and assumptions from you guys. Thank you for also confirming this is a real issue.

What you are describing are actual world problems which hinder and put in a black light the way we view these places (especially sub-saharan africa).
However,what if we could take these problems and use them as a basis for conflicts (mixed with sci-fi and fantasy lore) for the stuff we create, I feel we could really create ''grounded'' and relatable universes...


I also heard stories about europeans and westerners not being able to relate to ''non-white'' characters...which is a shame...
I'm a minority myself but this never stopped me to picture myself living the same issues as a white or asian character....

I remember, also all of my life, being influenced by american comics and japanese mangas, I would also only draw caucasian characters.

When, I got about 18 years old, I got some sort of an awakening and started drawing more ethnic characters (blacks, amerindian and asians)...

Once, during character designing class, a guy once came to me and started flipping my sketchbook during a session and shouted in shock:

''why are you only drawing black characters?''

I was kind of shy and felt embarassed since he made it like it was a bad thing. I had never drawn african characters before and I was experimenting on a couple of pages (hairstyles, facial structure,etc) and simply stopped drawing ethnical non-white characters since then...people like them less apparently (even worse if they're not stereotyped -_- )...

While we're talking about this, let's applaud Dice  Studios for making their protagonist an ASIAN WOMEN in M's Edge...though I feel like we're drifting away from the subject now.

Joopson

"Africa and South America are hugely unexploited..."

Surely you can come up with a less horrible sounding title.

Edit: Much better.  

ArtisticTiger

Joopson said:

"Africa and South America are hugely unexploited..."

Surely you can come up with a less horrible sounding title.

It's no problem at all really, everyone overstood what he meant etc, just words:P.

ExcessiveZero

ArtisticTiger said:

Joopson said:

"Africa and South America are hugely unexploited..."

Surely you can come up with a less horrible sounding title.

It's no problem at all really, everyone overstood what he meant etc, just words:P.

You have to admit it sure did sound quite cringey, could have been worded better, Rich historical Cultures unused or something.

Blond

english is not my first language but I do realize how stupid it sound now. XD

Should 've used ''are ignored'' or ''unconsidered''

GarageBay9

I actually sat down and had a conversation more or less identical to this with a producer, where we were bouncing back and forth the idea of a game not only set in South America, but about the Cold War years and the struggles between pro-Western and pro-Communist groups in various nations seen through the average person's perspective.

What it came down to was that it was a fascinating era with rich history that was entirely untouchable except by a studio "from there", because if somebody else tried to do it and got even the slightest detail wrong, they'd get ripped apart in social media from a zillion angles on Twitter and Tumblr.  Cultural appropriation, racism, colonialism, revisionist history - there were too many viewpoints that a well-intentioned but imperfect effort could get turned into a scandal.  The game inevitably would be known for being the target of hashtag activism, not the game itself.  And so no investor would back it, at least on a AAA scale.

I asked "what about Far Cry 2?"

"It's set in Africa.  It's not ABOUT Africa.  It's about mercenaries and a Joseph Conrad novel."

"What about Grim Fandango?"

"Not set in Mexico, not about Mexico.  And even then it got criticized for cultural appropriation.  It wasn't as much of an issue when it was originally released because social media didn't exist then to magnify one angry whackjob into the leading story on CNN.  It had already seasoned into 'classic' by the time of the re-release."

"What about Resident Evil 5?"

"Set in Africa, not about Africa.  Remember the Two Minutes Hate when it was first shown at E3 and you had a white player character shooting lots of black zombies?  Not going there."

"Ok, how about Desert Fighters?  North Africa."

"Shut up, man, that wasn't even released.  You're probably one of like a dozen people who remembers it.  And it was a flight sim."

"What about Tropico?  By everything you've said, they should be out of business by now."

"...yeah, I think they pay somebody off."

Blond

Garagebay9, I've had the same discussion with a professionnal friend of mine who almost ran a cartoon for Nickelodeon. He's black himself and the show he's running figures in a far west/cowboy settings.

When I introduced him the idea on making something set in more ''exotic'' places, he simply said, while he'd like, he stated it doesnt appeal to audiences...

MagicSugar

Once, during character designing class, a guy once came to me and started flipping my sketchbook during a session and shouted in shock:

''why are you only drawing black characters?''

I was kind of shy and felt embarassed ...

Gawwwddd...
He must not be aware of a lot of cool iconic characters in games (comics and animation - uhmm, Cyborg! Iron Patriot..).







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdCAUyaA6Lg

Daew

The weird thing with those examples is they all have similar build and hairstyle. Though i guess so do the male "European" protagonists. 

edit: derp did not see afro samurai lol

claydough

tho not historical...

I like realized cultural concepts from new sources like district 9. For it's time I thought Blade Runner did a nice job with cultural mash-up of street language lingo and advertising. Even a movie like "attack the block" challenges my preconceptions of western cultural norms. ( more flavor at least )

claydough

Daew said:

The weird thing with those examples is they all have similar build and hairstyle. Though i guess so do the male "European" protagonists. 

edit: derp did not see afro samurai lol

also everyone knows all Romans and Spartans have English accents...

.nL

If it ain't 'murican, it's gotta be cockney.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob02JOLOMtQ
 

Neox

MagicSugar said:

Tons of african american people

I didn't check all characters, but is this thread about countries, nations or the color of their skin? because most of the people you posted are from the united states. While racial diversity is a cool thing, i don't think this thread was pointed in that direction.

Personally i would love to see some african (as huge as the country is, i lack the knowledge of many individual parts of it) folklore tied into games, or inuit based games in lands of ice and hundred types of snow. or native americans despite the US based ones.

MagicSugar

Neox said:

MagicSugar said:

Tons of african american people

Careful, either you're misquoting me or confusing me with another replier. I never said that.

And if you're referring to my last post, you should READ the post I was replying to.  I don't want my statements to be taken out of context or be used for somebodies agenda regarding racial issues.

Thank you.

Neox

oh you are right, somehow i ignored that part, i think it is mostly due to the formating being broken with quotes it's hard to see whats actually where a quote ends and your post starts

sorry about that

JacqueChoi

I'm glad we don't do it too often tbh.

Would you guys be ok with this?

Or This?


I don't think western studios should handle source material and cultures well. It's usually driven by executives and management with no familiarity with the source material.


 We end up with a lot of this crap:
http://screenrant.com/worst-examples-whitewashing-movies/?view=all

Daew

Hoping this doesn't sound too insensitive, I really do think its incredibly tragic what has/is happening to Africa, but a story based game set in current africa, where you had to survive all the gangs, tribes and factions sounds really interesting.
but then....how would you know what's what when making it. Wouldn't touch it without first hand experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSElmEmEjb4

thomasp

i don't think you need to go full retard with it, just grab interesting elements from a culture and mix & match. that's how people do with e.g. japanese stuff, right? ubisoft's "from dust" did it nicely i thought - african, polynesian or whatever their starting point was. a look that stood out.

MagicSugar

thomasp said:

i don't think you need to go full retard with it, just grab interesting elements from a culture and mix & match.

I agree.  I don't think it would be a good business model if your primary motivation for making and selling a game is politically motivated.  That you don't see enough non-white characters so you hammer your message via your game how you want people to think like you and your world views when it comes to race.  Sure, you can do it and maybe get some media exposure but if it's heavy handed I don't think you'll make a lot money for the invested resource$ you'd put into it.

I mean you can make fun games and educate at the same time if you focus first on the entertainment factor. Why people buy games first and foremost.

Some ideas:

- Mexican luchadores
-Gambian wrestlers
-games with animals specific to a region (kinda like a sonic or crash bandicoot level in the jungle): piranhas, phytons, polar bears
- Brazilian martial arts: brazilian jujitsu, capoeira
- environment: earthquake occurences in Chile
-ancient books in Timbuktu (mission: protect them from modern day terrorists)

Blond

I'm thinking of a project right now featuring carribean voodoo with respect to the actual material (I'm carribean myself) but I'm scared it will not attract people...

Gaurav Mathur

I had a few unrelated thoughts on this:

• There are regional markets around the world where for example, African game developers are making culturally-themed games for an African market.  This wasn't the case ten years ago.  One of the things I love most about working on gamedevmap is seeing trends like this emerge on a global scale.  Maybe some of these games can break out to wider audience if they were able to get wider exposure.
• There are so many ways to bring different cultural ideas into a game:  Omikron: The Nomad Soul (the game David Bowie was in years ago) was the first game I know to build the concept of reincarnation into a gameplay system.  Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak has a clear North Indian classical music influence in it's soundtrack -- in fact, one of the collaborators on the soundtrack is Gaurav Raina, who is one half of the MIDIval Punditz, a DJ group based in New Delhi, India.  Grim Fandango took a big part of its visual direction from Mexican folklore and fused it with Art Nouveau and Art Deco. 
• There is something of a global gestalt that games with mainstream appeal tap into.  I met some of the EVE Online art team years ago.  One of my high school friends was a programmer on the original Homeworld game.  I had just come off of working on a couple of Star Wars flight action games.  It was striking to me that we had all tapped into the same cultural references and created such different game experiences out of common influences.  It got me thinking about whether the differentiating characteristics of these games was in part due to their development being in Reykjavik, Vancouver, and Marin County.  The wine industry has the concept of terroir.  The basic idea is that environmental conditions can specifically influence the attributes and character of a wine.  I like to think that can (but doesn't have to) apply to game development.
• That mix-and-match idea is a great starting point for exploration of diverse cultural influences.  Waterloo World in the original Psychonauts was influenced in part by the Rococo style, part Grant Wood's American Regionalist paintings, and part Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture!  Exciting new things can emerge by looking back.  Psychonauts Level Designer Steve Chen shared an exercise with me that he learned in architecture school:  broadly grid out a piece of paper.  Inside each space, write down one idea that you're interested in exploring further.  Close your eyes and randomly pick out three ideas by pointing at them.  Your challenge is to develop these three randomly selected ideas into one new cohesive concept!    

MagicSugar

Blond said:

I'm thinking of a project right now featuring carribean voodoo with respect to the actual material (I'm carribean myself) but I'm scared it will not attract people...

You'll never know if you have an audience for your ideas until you actively seek them out and possibly get support to develop and produce them in whatever platform you choose (film, graphic novel, games).

Concept artist Rasmus Berggreen (now a studio owner) used Kickstarter to crowdfund his graphic novel Fall of Gods into reality.  He was inspired as a kid by Disney movies and as a mature artist felt compelled to create something set in Norse mythology that's more authentic in perspective and origin than in Disney fairy tale movies (Berggreen is Scandinavian).

And now Fall of Gods is in development to become a feature length movie as a result of the graphic novel.

This is a trailer of the graphic novel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCUCFN81KZU

Ryusaki

Well, i would argue that the potential of 95% of cultures is untapped because the so called mainstream western market is so exclusive that even most of the western world is underrepresented.
How many games do you know who are set in Switzerland, Poland, Netherlands, Denmark, Spain ... ?

Blond

*sigh*

Ryusaki, you're right. I iwsh USA hadn't so much influence on everything...

Zack Maxwell

Does Assassin's Creed 4 count? Rokka was also a recent anime with an Aztec theme. I think Shadow of the Colossus also had kind of a Central American theme, though it was a very high fantasy version.
Resident Evil 5 took place in Africa.

Blond

AC 4 could count if the chracter would've been mestizo or of african descent (Adewale counts but it's not a full game).

Shadow of the Colossus is Ainu culture ( an ethnic tribal group from Japan)...

RE5, you can't be serious...

Anchang-Style

nvm
pls delete (or can i do it myself)

Hito

I think there will be some more shift as we see jobs shift... Gameloft recently closed Auckland studio and opened office in Nigeria. They already have studio in Johannesburg. Granted most of it is for local markets, but it does open up possibilities to the rest of the world.

blankslatejoe

Hmm...maybe look at whos buying as much as who's making. The biggest markets are based around those western locations, so I think a lot of devs are simply pandering to the biggest market they can get...but yeah..I'm tired of playing games set in NYC and San Fransisco too (or, if they're exotic..a generic tropical island).

But I don't think I'd want western devs to make games set in other places--I keep thinking back to playing Persona 4--a very very Japanese game based around modern day Japanese high schoolers, and how much I enjoyed actually being immersed in a culture that was slightly familiar, but also utterly unique from my own. If a western dev attempted to make that, and didn't set it in the US, it would likely be watered down to an unimpressive puddle of cultural meh. I think I'd prefer to play games made by people who present their cultural point of view in an undiluted and non westernized way--ie, made by Africans, by South Americans, etc.

I think that the democratization of the toolchain is causing that to happen--not all games NEED to sell 2 million copies in order to break even anymore...so I think we'll start seeing a lot more games based around underrepresented cultures.

Now, I'm bored by Tolkein/DnD-inspired fantasy mono-culture too..how do we fix that one?

Joopson

blankslatejoe said:

I think I'd prefer to play games made by people who present their cultural point of view in an undiluted and non westernized way--ie, made by Africans, by South Americans, etc.

I fully agree with this. To make a game in a certain setting, and to make it accurate, you have to have a really intimate view of the setting. Otherwise it can very easily end up either watered down, or as an offensive/ridiculous caricature.

Also, I think generally, the most interesting experiences are ones that are atypical. Whether that means sprung from an unfamiliar culture, or from a unique individual mind, I think it holds true.

Zack Maxwell

Ah! there was also Far Cry 3 and the Dead Island series.

Blond

Grim, sorry but you're out of point.

Blankslatejoe just made the most interesting reply in this thread. I think you're right. Minorities should stop waiting after the ''white men'' to make stories about them. There was actually a studio based on this (minority media) and I do wish to see more initiative like this (with higher budget).

Blond

Grim, sorry but you're totally out of point.

blankslatejoe , very interesting reply. I guess we minorites should stop waiting for the ''white men'' to make games about them and do it ourserlves.
Theres was actually a studio based on this mentality (Minority Media, those who made Papo and Yo). I wish there were more initiative (and budget) from our part.

Blond

Grim, sorry but you're totally out of point.

blankslatejoe , very interesting reply. I guess we minorites should stop waiting for the ''white men'' to make games about them and do it ourserlves.
Theres was actually a studio based on this mentality (Minority Media, those who made Papo and Yo). I wish there were more initiative (and budget) from our part.

Blond

er...bug from the site, my post didnt update so I made multiple post without realizing it

Hito

"made by people who present their cultural point of view in an undiluted and non westernized way--ie, made by Africans, by South Americans, etc."

This raises interesting point... Take Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner for example, it was accused of not being authentic to the source material; to which the director rightly replied "Every generation has their version. It was a message more fitting for our times. Killing people doesn't solve anything." The last sentiment more or less originated in western liberal thought from Jesus. Exactly what is undiluted? or westernized?

Gaurav Mathur

I don't mind cultural appropriation so much because it moves the needle and has the potential to bring something new to the global monoculture.  The source material remains there for those who become inspired enough to dig deeper.  I would also argue that it's unfairly limiting to put the responsibility or the burden of putting the act of creation squarely on the shoulders of someone from the culture being referenced.  

The best henna artist I've ever seen in my life is a white woman living in Oakland, California:  http://hennalounge.com/
She innovated by co-creating a line of henna-influenced metallic tattoos that's pretty amazing:  http://nudink.com/

Almost twenty million views of the new Coldplay+Beyonce video in the first week of its release to me is pretty cool:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YykjpeuMNEk

I'm seeing something I've never seen before come out of cultural source material, and hopefully millions of people around the world are relating to it.  I'm curious to see how it will be adapted for the upcoming Superbowl Halftime show!  

For the record, I was what's called a Third Culture Kid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_culture_kid).  I didn't grow up in America.

Justin Meisse

Blond said:

I'm thinking of a project right now featuring carribean voodoo with respect to the actual material (I'm carribean myself) but I'm scared it will not attract people...

Let big corporations worry about making bland products that are supposed to appeal to broad markets, make something unique and personal.

claydough

thomasp said:

i don't think you need to go full retard with it, just grab interesting elements from a culture and mix & match. that's how people do with e.g. japanese stuff, right? ubisoft's "from dust" did it nicely i thought - african, polynesian or whatever their starting point was. a look that stood out.

The world is getting smaller, and artists will always crave dem influences.
Some Asian takes on western civ can come off pretty strange sometimes ( curly mustachioed n top hatted weirdness )
But I love it when a gem like Song Kang Ho pops thru in a cultural mashup like snowpiercer n The Good The Bad n The Weird

xvampire

not sure why  in this conversation ancient Egypt and Sudan not included. 
that is africa  cultural , ethnicity , and race. 

Sugus

Guild Wars Nightfall did a really good job, if you haven't seen the game just take a look, it was a fantastic game!