Why No One is Playing Dustborn - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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We're the aliens, we're the refugees. We walk among you, we're right behind you.
No time in the past, no time in the past.
We're the gunfighters, we're the champions, we're the number fours, our name is New York.
We're the future, we're the dawn of a brand new era.
That was different. You make a living doing this?
We're a bit rusty, and it's been a long day.
Yeah, sure thing. By the way, that song could be considered offensive in the Republic.
This isn't Pacifica. People here don't like politics with their entertainment.
Everyone's been talking about the game Dustborn, but not for a good reason.
Now, when I first saw this game, I wasn't particularly interested aside from the cutesy graphics, which ever since Breath of the Wild, everybody's been copying for some reason, and the ability to make choices, which I absolutely like.
There's nothing particularly about this game that grabs me. I don't like the characters, and it just feels like it has no soul, like it was just churned out by some kind of manufacturing company.
I have this picture of liberty in my head, unchanged for 15 years, but things always change.
Places, people, feelings. Trust is brittle and hard to rebuild, but we have to try.
I enjoyed meeting your family. Your mom's cool.
You know that trope when everyone's like, what are you talking about, Altiori? You're so stupid.
Oh my god, you so don't like gay people.
Okay, if you say so, but uh, was I wrong?
Hmm? All modern genres of things that have a black woman lead, they always end-
Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay.
I could just be confirmation biasing as well, but at some point, you have to admit, when it's a little bit more than just coincidence now, and if the queer community themselves are noticing it, which I've already said at length, and I guess they're wrong too for pointing it out.
So this game has some heavily, overly racist tones.
They're doing it to appeal to an audience that does not really exist in comparison with the rest of the world.
These are supposed to be the good guys, right?
And if you look at the lyrics of what they're saying in this clip right here, it says,
Your time has passed, you won't last, your kind won't last.
Like, bro, what in the Nazi regime is actually this game?
And then it's the amount of gaslighting that goes on in the game itself to try and make people believe that they are the problem for pointing out what are obvious racists.
Like, there's actually a clip from the game, and by the way, Rueba has a full playthrough already.
I'm definitely not going to pay for this game, and I don't want to really waste time playing it, but if you want to check out the actual storyline, you can go to Rueba.
But there's a scene that's been making its rounds, and some other channels were talking about it, and I'm just, I cannot believe that this is actually in game.
Like, this is actually something that they put in the game and thought that the majority of people were going to be down with it.
And it's not just me, like, everybody is pointing it out that in a lot of these modern day entertainment and games, all the white people are evil, particularly white, straight men.
And I don't understand how that's fighting for inclusivity.
You want diversity, and that's great, but now you're excluding whole demographics of people, and then gaslighting people into making them think that they're racist for calling out racist behavior and sexist behavior.
It just doesn't make any sense to me.
It almost seems as though the person who made this game was trolling or something.
Now, this isn't the only thing that encompasses the game.
There's other stuff in there too, but the way that the game was marketing itself really didn't do any favors for it, to be honest.
And I think a lot of people are just so put off by everything that's coming out nowadays, constantly attacking a huge swath of the audience.
And even people who don't fit that demographic, they're not down with this.
You're with a black kid, dresses like a writer. Does he know anything?
You are racist.
Okay, so that's crazy.
So they're pointing out in this portion of the game that this person is utilizing the victim mentality to get out of a situation.
When the person or the people who are asking, that just so happened to be white-skinned, are simply just using a descriptor for a person.
Also, it says they seem to be super weird about race.
Think we can capitalize on that anxiety kid?
All the person said is there's a black kid who looks like a writer.
I don't really see what is the issue there.
But if the whole narrative is that, oh, these people just want white people in their space, then that already is a problem.
It's like you're trying to tell the players that, you know, pale-skinned people just hate everybody who's not like them.
And you're essentially teaching people how to become the very thing you claim you're fighting against.
So they even admit that they're capitalizing on anxiety, which is not even really anxiety.
The dialogue is the one that capitalizes the color of the person.
I don't see him putting any emphasis on it.
You're with a black kid. Dresses like a writer.
Okay. Oh, my God. I'm getting so tired of seeing all this crap. I swear to God.
So now you're wondering why people won't play this game.
Well, marketing does have a lot to do with it.
There's some elements about this game that I think is interesting, like the RimWorld thing where each character has specific powers and whatnot.
But let's look at this interview of this from this developer.
So they're saying that nobody forced them to make a game with a diverse cast.
No one should have to force you to do that.
Unfortunately, there are situations where that is the case.
But it's good to know that they didn't have to bow down to those rules or expectations.
Hello, my name is Dominique Tipper and I play Pax in Dustborn.
And my name is Ragnar Tornquist.
I play Pax in Dustborn.
And my name is Ragnar Tornquist.
I am a creative director at Red Thread Games and game director and writer on Dustborn.
Hey, Dominique. How are you doing?
Hello. Nice to see you.
And you. And Dominique, I think it's fair to say a lot of people recognize you from The Expanse, the very successful Amazon TV show.
You've been up to something quite interesting recently.
Tell us kind of what it's all about and how you got involved with it.
I play Pax in Dustborn.
She's the kind of person that you play in the game and you're following her story.
And she is what you call an anomal.
It means that she has this kind of power where she can weaponize and use her words.
So she's on the run with like a group of her kind of friends and family, found family.
As the game goes on, you kind of develop relationships with them.
And they are delivering a package to Nova Scotia in Canada.
So that's kind of the premise of the game.
When you have a moment, I'd like to talk about something.
How actually does a developer based in Norway end up working on a game that's set in a sort of futuristic dystopian USA?
That's a good question. It's not the first time I've heard that question.
I mean, first off, the idea of the American road trip is very, very sort of embedded in our culture, I think.
It's sort of a default in many ways, right, in terms of pop culture.
It's where a lot of pop culture comes from.
So right off the bat, nothing is wrong with this.
When you listen to this interview, it seems like people just wanted to tell a story about these group of friends going on a road trip.
A lot of people like that whole thing, I guess.
The colors pop. A lot of people might be drawn in because of that.
It looks different. Not really.
But if they're used to playing other types of games in this genre, they may think it looks different.
And so nothing's inherently wrong with this.
But then it gets weird.
And I know some people might not see it, but it's good to get an eye as to why people of all different colors and backgrounds and sexual orientations are not down with these types of entertainment as the interview goes on.
See, diversity is a good thing unless you weaponize it or use it to divide people.
Sure, and about language and about, like I said, this melting pot of cultures and ideas and politics.
Except for the white people, though. They forgot to add that.
There is a bit of a melting pot there. You've got a very diverse array of characters.
There's a lot of focus in the industry at the moment on making sure that characters that do come from different backgrounds are kind of authentically represented.
How have you approached that challenge with Dustborn?
That's an interesting question, because as you probably know, there are a lot of gamers in the world who are unhappy with games that have characters that don't necessarily look like gaming characters used to look 10, 20, 30 years ago.
I don't know what he's talking about here, because there's a lot of games that existed 20, 30 years ago that also had diverse characters.
But they weren't fixating on the color of those characters.
I mean, we have Final Fantasy VII all the way from 1997, the original one, of which Barret was a very integral character.
Black characters being in video games is not a brand new thing that just happened over the past five years.
I don't know if these people just came into existence just now, but their ignorance is showing.
Other characters who were non-white have been in video games, so I don't know what this person is talking about.
And all it serves to do is showcase his ignorance and showcase how much of a liar he is.
He's either very ignorant or he's straight up lying.
And the thing is, people can see right through this, because I don't know if these people forget that everybody has the internet at their fingertips so we can look this stuff up.
And a lot of gamers have played a lot of these other games, me included.
I have played a lot of video games.
And when they say, well, you know, 10 years ago, they didn't look like this.
What are you talking about?
I have collected freaking retro games that the graphics look terrible and there are non-white characters in them.
Playable non-white characters.
So I'm so confused as to what this person is talking about.
I'm actually shocked when I go back and I look at old movies from like the 1950s all the way up to the 1980s.
Like, even the 19-freaking-40s.
Like, you look back even further.
Was it the best representation?
Maybe not so, but there are so many movies with black lead characters.
And funny enough, back then they were represented more tastefully than the media is representing them now, which is what makes this all crazy to me.
So this person, this already drops off.
If anyone was looking to buy this game and they were listening to this person speak, this would already turn them off.
Just that line right there.
We really set out to create a cast of characters that just feel like a representation of the world as it is today and America as it is.
You know, it's diverse.
It's not just filled with people who look like me.
Oh my God.
These people don't get out much, clearly.
Is he being held at gunpoint?
Why is he blinking so rapidly?
Stockholm Syndrome much? Are you okay?
The world as it is today, if you go throughout the majority of the world, it does not look like the major cities in America.
I'm sorry.
The reason why diversity is so beautiful is because people come from specific geographical locations and they have specific phenotypes.
They look a certain way.
They have different colors because of where they hail from.
Ecuadorians, Italians, Greek people, Spaniards, Asian people, East Asian, South Asian, West Asian, North African, South African.
If you look at all these different countries and cultures, you'll see what makes them different.
I mean, they wouldn't be diverse if they didn't come from somewhere else to make them look different.
They all have different things that they do.
And I think it's really cool looking at all the different people from around the world and seeing what they do for fun.
Their diet, their mannerisms, their clothes, the way they express themselves, their views, their hair.
Like, this is what makes diversity.
Look how freaking badass, beautiful a lot of these people are.
You go to places like South Korea.
The languages, the foods.
It's honestly very telling when people only think in the realms of Western, American, white people being the very core thing that they base everybody else off of.
Like, nobody else exists.
And that only showcases that you have a very narrow view of race and ethnicity.
You know, when people talk about internalized racism and they use it as an insult to other people who are non-white and white for calling them out for their gaslighting, it's these people they should be referring to.
Because nobody else is overly as hung up on what the skin color of characters look like as the people making these games.
And this is body language.
He seems like he's being forced to say this.
He says that's not the case, but you don't sound like you're speaking with your own mind.
You're speaking as though you're trying to impress someone.
You know, it's diverse.
It's not just filled with people who look like me.
And that's also why we've sort of tapped into the cast we have, writers who are more representative of the characters in the game, and trying to sort of just learn more and try to create a more diverse cast than most games have.
Just because we think it's more interesting.
It's the right thing to do.
It's the right thing to do?
Are you making up for past offenses or something?
Because he looks as though he really is being forced to say this.
He's just looking everywhere.
He looks like he snorted a whole big bag of coke before he did this interview.
And he looks uncomfortable as F.
The right thing to do?
You can tell a story about Norwegian culture and just have Norwegians in it.
Or Norse mythology and you don't have to ham fist an Egyptian person or a dark skinned person in there just because it's the right thing to do.
No.
It's not the right thing to do.
If you're doing it specifically because race and I want people to see skin, then it's not the right thing to do.
If it's something that you want to do and you have a passion for because you like seeing different colored characters on screen and that's your main focus of your story, then that's fine.
And like I said, I'm not saying that that's all that encompasses this game, but when you are marketing your game as diverse, knowing that diversity and diverse, those words, seem to be synonymous with either non-white or very shallow characters who are non-white that are not written well and written specifically because they're non or anti-white, then people are going to be trigger happy and put off by this, including non-white people.
Spoilers for Silo.
It's actually a pretty interesting show and I love it and I like the female character, even though I'm kind of tired of seeing them now because they're always so freaking forced.
But she's one of them that I like.
I already knew, it's so predictable from early on that the main evil character was going to be the white dude.
And it was so stupid and badly written because the black female character, who was the villain, it's revealed later that she's crying in her room and it's not her fault she was being evil, it was actually the white dude who was making her do all those things.
At this point, I'm just like, bruh, come on.
Can we actually not?
How is this being diverse when it's now so predictable?
A lot of people are put off because if you're pushing for diversity, it should be everybody is different and everybody is included, including white people, not just we're anti-white and that equals diversity.
Now do you understand why people are against diversity because you've now co-opted the word to mean that you're racist against one group of people.
If people had come out and said we want a diverse America without black people in it though, like no black people, they're all evil and they're the villains and it's just going to be white and Asian and everybody else, except for black people.
Can you imagine?
Does that sound diverse to you?
No, but they are being diverse.
They've got white, they've got Asian, they've got Arabic, they've got a bunch of other things.
Everybody else except for dark-skinned people, just dark-skinned people alone.
It doesn't even have to be black Americans, just straight up.
If you're dark-skinned with kinky 4C hair, that is, you're just out, man.
Nope, no diversity for you.
You're not diverse.
It's too bad.
Even if, let's just say the dark-skinned people had been the leading race in this country or in another country, let's see, were the predominantly majority still dark-skinned people with the textured hair.
And then white people come in and Chinese people come in.
When I say white, I mean everybody who falls under that line, like German, New Zealand, like the majority of people in those countries that are white-skinned.
They come in and they're like, you know what, these people, you've got representation enough in freaking Nigeria or Tanzania.
We're going to just bring in a whole bunch of people now.
We want it to be diverse.
And the Nigerians or Tanzanians are like, okay, we got you.
And then you start doing that, but you start pushing out straight Nigerian men.
And you're like, now you're all evil.
And what we mean by diversity, we don't mean you though.
It would not be okay in any other situation.
So it shouldn't be okay here.
It's not about the right thing to do.
If you really believe this is the right way that you're going, then I'm sorry, but you're kind of deluded.
Maybe this came from a good place initially, but the execution of it is just so distasteful.
And it puts off everyone.
Not just white people and people that happen to look like you.
Everybody.
We think it's more interesting.
It's the right thing to do.
And I think the stories that come out of it are also, you know, they're more original.
They're more interesting, I think.
The way he's blinking, look at his body language.
He looks like he's trying to rehearse.
He's like, I have to just say things that are nice.
So the diversity people don't kill me.
He doesn't look like he actually means what he's saying.
He's just looking at his face, unless he's on drugs or he has a tick or something.
That's always possible.
But you're saying that for stories to be interesting, people have to have different skin colors.
That's kind of fucked up.
What about all the African stories where everybody has the same skin tone?
What about all the Chinese or Japanese stories where everybody has the same skin tone?
In any other culture that's not white, and you would say these same words, you would come off as racist.
Like your culture is not good enough.
Like you're too bland.
It's more interesting if we have people that don't all look black.
Sorry, not sorry.
It comes across disgusting when you say it about anybody else.
It should come across as disgusting when you say it about people who look like you as well.
They're more interesting, I think.
What can I do for you this time, man?
You mentioned that you don't engage with the negativity and there is a lot of that online.
On the flip side of that is that stories that do make diverse cast more prominent, actually, when they mean a lot to other people who aren't kicking off about it.
Has anyone already got in touch with you more along those lines?
Not with Dustborn yet.
Again, I think maybe when it's out and a bit more out in the world, that will happen.
But definitely with other stuff I've done like The Expanse.
Because I mean, I kind of hate buzzwords and buzz sentences like representation matters, but they do come from somewhere.
And I think there's nothing quite like seeing yourself on screen or in a game.
There's nothing quite like that.
I mean, I wouldn't agree with that.
I would say there's better things than me seeing myself in entertainment.
I mean, I guess it's cute because like, oh, wow, look, it's a whatever.
Or if you're in one of those towns where it's only a specific color of people and you realize you're the only Asian person or the only red hair person, you're like, oh, shit.
Wow, there's another one of me.
All right, moving on, whatever.
Does it really matter?
Does it impact my life personally?
No. Does it impact my life to see me in anime?
No, I don't care about that.
It's predominantly Japanese.
Why would I care about that?
Why would that upset my entire existence?
I'm not that shallow that I can't,
I mean, yes, I'm shallow with certain things.
I want my fictional characters to look decent, but I'm not that shallow that I can't relate to someone if they don't have my skin color or my hair color or my whatever.
It just feels very weird.
Like, I like writing male characters, to be honest, like POV with male characters.
Just amazing.
I'm not a dude.
I don't have experience as a dude.
If I decide to identify as a dude tomorrow,
I can't come out and be like,
I know what it means to be a man.
No, I do not.
And I never will.
I don't know what that's like.
I can try to empathize based on what I have seen and people I've spoken to and urges that I may have that men also share, but I can't ever say I know exactly what it feels like to be a dude.
But I still like writing guy characters based on other characters as well.
It's something that I absolutely love.
And I do that and people have told me
I do a good job at it.
If they're lying, they're lying, but enough people that I don't know have said that and that's because I can relate to the character.
And sometimes, funny enough, people who read those stories or my characters, they get mad at the men for saying very basic things.
But when the women say the same things, they're like, yes, sis, strength and power.
You go girl, you tell him.
But when the guy stands up for himself, they're like, this misogyny.
And I'm like, and I'm getting upset for my male character because I'm like, what the fuck?
He literally said the same thing in a much tamer way than the woman character said it, but everyone is jumping on his dick for that.
Like, I'm actually getting offended because I'm like, I put myself in the characters.
It doesn't matter that I'm not a guy.
I still put myself in the guy's shoes, underwear, whatever you want to say.
And I imagine what it'd be like falling in love with a woman or having to go out and fight and I'm terrified, but I know I have to defend my family.
And there's something deep inside of me that wants to run away.
But when I'm thinking about my kids that I don't even have, I can't, I can't.
This is, everyone's looking to me to do this.
I don't even have the option to run away or else I am penalized for doing a very basic human action, which is life preservation.
I can't even do that.
Because if I survive,
I'm going to catch shit for it for the rest of my life because I'm the dude and I should have done that.
I should have protected everyone, even though everyone is against me for just existing.
Like, and that just, that's what real empathy is.
You don't have to be something for you to empathize with that thing.
I can feel it.
I can feel the crushing stress of wanting to just take myself out because it's like you do or you die.
Like, it doesn't matter what happens.
You're always at a loss.
And it's a wonder why more people don't lash out.
And I actually like, it bothers me to the point where I have to quit writing for a second because I'm just feeling it so much.
I don't blame the readers because they're just being honest.
And I love that.
But dude, if you only require someone to look like you for you to be able to relate to that character or for you to feel like it's the best thing in the world, then that says a lot about your view on the world.
And you want people to see you more than just your skin color, but yet you're acting like this.
But then again, the modern sense as I've showed in the other videos that people don't really care about that now.
Now they want you to see their skin color but they don't want you to see their skin color.
Very contradictory.
If you've never ever seen it before or even if you have just different.
Never seen it before.
What are you, where are you guys coming?
Did they just make these people in a lab like three weeks ago?
What are you talking about, bro?
What, these are not gamers.
They can't be.
They can't be.
What games were y'all playing?
Never seen it before.
Or even if you have just different versions of it that isn't stereotypical.
And so for me that always.
It's funny she's talking about it being stereotypical but yet you cast a very strong black woman lead who is not straight and very angsty and stoic and annoying which is what everyone's been doing now which is kind of stereotypical.
The angry black woman who is masculine and needs apparently they're not good enough to be dated by straight people.
Like that's not stereotypical.
Really, we're not perpetuating those stereotypes but whatever.
I don't think these people actually know what they're saying.
I think they're just saying what they think they should say so they don't get canceled.
These matters more than any negative feedback because I'm just like, no, normally the people you're negative about it's not for them.
And I won't really.
Okay, so now they're not playing it.
Let's see how that's working out for you.
Nobody's playing this game.
What in the world?
Okay, hold on.
Okay.
Ah, what?
Okay, you can't be serious.
Wait.
All time peak is 76.
76 people?
Hold on.
Something must be wrong.
Let's search for another game.
Wait, let's look at the list.
Bro, people are still playing Dota.
Like Black Myth Wukong.
Last 30 day.
Okay.
I just clicked all.
When did this game come out?
Okay, so this is just for Steam.
So it's saying from the release date which is August 20.
And I'm sorry, what?
Only 76 people?
And this is just Steam?
You must be lying.
Oh, no.
Hold on.
Seven days.
Bro, you've got more people playing Rust.
You know how old Rust is?
I was looking for a game that I like that is just super niche and is old or what have you and irrelevant.
Strictly irrelevant.
And in the last 30 days, it has more players than Dustborn.
Well, you know, it's not for us, right?
It's not for the majority of us.
Clearly, no one's playing this game.
So, that's funny.
Well, you heard it here first.
Normally, the people you're negative about is not for them.
And I won't really stand for it, to be honest.
I'm from the East End.
Like, if y'all wanna hit me up on social media and do some of that nonsense, like, go ahead and try.
I'm not the one.
Okay, Kamala Harris.
Whatever you say.
Well, anyway, look.
I'm not interested in the game.
I'm not interested in all this freaking divisiveness inside of the video game.
Like, people, even if, like, the majority of the story would be good, right?
Because they show other stuff in here, but then they have this weird scene with the cops stopping them at the border and just some other weird-ass stuff.
Because people are so sick and tired of this, they may be immersed in the story, but now, they see something like this and they're like, okay, I'm tired of this.
I'm seeing it everywhere I go now.
And I'm not just talking about people with different skin color.
Because there's a bunch of different entertainment that have people of varying skin tones and colors, and their shows are doing well and nobody cares.
Now, they're not perfect, but where they did get upset before because they were like, oh, God, it's another one of these people making shallow-ass non-white characters just for the sake of saying they're not racist.
But then you actually watch it and things like House of the Dragon did a decent job.
People actually are characters that feel real.
For the majority of people, it's gonna feel forced and it's going to feel very off-putting because often when it's forced like this, it's poorly executed.
Even if it was coming from a good place, enough entertainment nowadays is so inauthentic.
And they're just rewritten in a very bland manner as if you're fitting some checklist of diverse traits without much thought of how this affects the story or the character development.
I'm not saying that this game is completely guilty of doing all of that, but the way they're marketing it with these interviews and with these clips that people are showing because they're saying, look, this is the stuff that you're putting in here with this propaganda that's dividing everyone.
We don't want to be divided.
We want to unite.
This is a game.
Why are you putting ethnicity against ethnicity?
It's not a different story.
It's the same exact thing that they've been doing for many years, which is white people are bad.
Everybody, black people, Chinese people,
Korean people, Japanese people, everybody, all of us are sick and tired of hearing that because most of us actually do get outside.
Most of us have friends from all different places.
And we have white friends, we have black friends, we have Spanish friends, we have Puerto Rican friends,
Italian, Greek, Egyptian.
Like nobody cares about the skin color of their friends or the people who they're fraternizing with.
In the real world, people just love people for being who they are.
You accept me for who I am,
I accept you for who you are.
You don't try to force your religion or your stuff on me and I don't try to do the same.
We try to see where each other is coming from, but if we agree to disagree, we keep it moving.
Then when they're called out, like these people are called out, they're like, you're racist, even though a lot of the people calling it out are not even black people.
I'm not saying that black people can't be racist either, but a lot of them, the ones that you're pandering to, they're not down with this.
So then you shut them up and say, you know what, go to the back of the bus, we didn't ask you for your opinion, you don't exist, okay?
You're not following the narrative that we want you to follow, so just shut up and sit the fuck down.
That's not giving.
Everybody here is recognizing it.
More people are waking up and they're seeing this shit for what it is, they're not down with it.
So your game could have been a great game, might have had a good story, if it had some soul in it and whatnot, but those few instances in the game are enough to put off people, and I hope that these people can understand why.
It's funny because in the intro, or when they're playing their music in the band, the guy who's supposed to be one of the bad guys is like, yeah, where we come from, they don't want their entertainment mixing with politics.
And they're doing, the game is doing this in such a way to say that the rest of us who say that, we're aligned with the bad guys and we're not wanting real world, at the moment, divisive politics in our entertainment where we're trying to escape.
So they're trying to be like, oh, look how meta we are.
We completely see, we know that's what people are gonna say, so we're gonna beat them to it like She Hulk did.
See how well that worked out for that.
See how well that works out for everything that goes that route.
But you know what?
You are all right is not for those people that have an issue.
You're all cool.
Every one of us that has an issue with this, all we have to do is not play it.
And so we did not.
I surely hope on the console it's doing much better because damn.
Audiences just want stories to feel authentic, characters that are well-developed and narratives that are compelling.
It's not too much to ask for.
As I've said, diversity in and of itself isn't a bad thing, particularly when it feels genuine and it enhances the story.
However, when it comes off feeling forced or preachy or it's used as this weapon against the audience or specific audience members, obviously it's gonna turn people off and it's going to lead to the decline of your work, of your franchises.
Nobody even knows about this franchise and it's already dead in the water.
Surely hope they didn't waste too much money on this thing because I would hate to be them right now.
But it's cool as long as they did it for a good cause, right?
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