Too Much Western Art

That's understandable and expected because - at least for the Native Americans - there was no system for keeping pieces of music, no history of written works, or any culturally significant artworks. Does that make them 'worse'? No, of course not. Does that make it okay to ignore them entirely? Of course not. But the fact of the matter is, in the case of this mechanic, it would be extremely difficult to find a painting, a piece of music, or a written work that is in any way suitable. Africa - at least sub-Saharan Africa - has some of the same issues, but I would be surprised if North Africa has no artists represented. I'm also surprised at the claim Latin America has no representation. No Pablo Neruda? No Gabriel García Márquez? None of the countless Latin American musicians that have had huge influence on global music? Pretty disappointing.

On the other hand, I'm also pretty disappointed that yet again this thread has fallen victim to the 'western education is limited' theme that comes up every five seconds in similar discussions on these forums. I grew up in an extremely Western environment, went to a traditional Anglo-esque school, and spent much more time studying works by international authors and artists than that of my own nation or heritage. Maybe that's not the case everywhere, but to simply write off ignorance as a product of the big bad Western education system is pretty ignorant in and of itself.

I guess you could look on the bright side:

The world is shrinking.

We've already seen the Civ team do a good job at making Civ more diverse. They even said they take into account modern markets (Brazil was mentioned as one of them in the Polygon article)

Civ 6 will surely be less Western, but make no mistake: The game will always have a Western slant. Do Inuit natives make games for their children taking into consideration what a couple of preppy Orange County tennis goers desire?

EDIT: Better not to derail this thread, got rid of my response

I_qua_I said:

I'm very disappointed with the overabundance of art (paintings/writings/music) from The West in BNW. There's a noticeable amount of Asian representation as well but so far I haven't seen any African, Native American, or Latin American pieces. Does this bother anyone else? To me, this imbalance is just screaming to be fixed (officially or via mods ).

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Firstly, just because you haven't seen them don't mean there aren't any. I've only gone through the Writers and Musicians and found:
African: Sayed Darwish, Solomon Linda
Native American: Louis W. Ballard, R. Carlos Nakai
Latin American: at least 10, including Argentine, Brazilian, Colombian, Cuban, Jamaican, Mexican and Nicaraguan (from Writers and Musicians alone).

I'm sure the Artists would have more if I could find a list of them.

The problem is, as stated, the way the game uses Great works is as the works of Great People, so unless you have a name and title you can't get it featured. I will actually go as far to congratulate the devs on at least some variety.

For example, Great works of Literature you would think are the most vulnerable to biases - anyone can enjoy a picture or music, but you need the be able to understand the language for literature. Going through the list of great writers, about 38% are either English or American, 35% are European/Western and the remaining 27% are from the rest of the world (Japanese, Nicaraguan, Persian, Argentine, Chinese, Colombian and Indian). That's perhaps I'll admit not perfect, but considering the game is made by English-speakers that's not too bad. As I say that's likely to be the category with the most bias.

Musicians, as expected, are better. Fully 31 different nationalities and origins represented. Only 15% are American or English, 40% are Western European and 8% Eastern European, leaving 37% to a wide variety of nationalities including Australian Aboriginal, Arabic, Assyrian, Brazilian, Chinese, Cuban, Egyptian, Indian, Indonesian, Jamaican, Japanese, Mexican, Native American, Siamese, Sumerian, Turkish and Zulu.

As I said, it's not going to be perfect. Personally I would congratulate Firaxis on doing a pretty reasonable job, having around a third of each category as non-western is actually better than I would have expected.

I_qua_I said:

I wouldn't use the term wrong, but what's unfortunate about this is that it perpetuates the kind of ignorance that prevents an accurate and meaningful understanding of our world. We could be content to expose ourselves only to what is local but by doing so we give up any chance of really knowing what life/people/the world is like, or what it could be.

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While I understand what you are saying, I am also tempted to slap you in the face for sentiments like this.

If you want people to educate themselves on the diversities this world has to offer, please promote proper education and such. Please do not come to a forum of a game made in the West for (mainly) Westerners, and then complain about the art being too narrow so people cannot educate themselves. The focus of a game in general is fun. If people learn something new then great, if not then meh. There are plenty of places and ways to learn about the world. Forcing it into a game is a no go in my book, even in a game of Civilization.

Anglo-Saxon world is maybe over represented. There are many unknown (at least to me) American and English artists, musicians/composers and writers. When I think of great musicians, writers or painters I dont really think Americans or English. French, Germans and Russians have much higher amount of great people in these fields IMO.

Wielki Hegemon said:

Again that story...
Sorry but all the world buying western blue jeans and listening to western pop music...
and playing western Civilization V game Face it

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And every leader wearing western suits

The idea of stuffing a work of "Art" for contemplative and decorative purposes is also very western.

Native America (not only talking about North here) did not have paintings per se, in the sense of simply searching for a decoration to stack in your wall. What they did have is amazing design of objects like Pottery, and also great Textile work; as well as Architecture and murals. So, technically, Great Artists wouldn't create "a Great Work" in the sense of the game.

Still... Modern American countries got that western thing of having paintings in a museum. And there's a lot of amazing American (again, not talking only about North here) painters and composers. Only here in Bolivia, which is a country without any kind of motivation from politics or others for doing art, we have amazing artists like Mamani Mamani.... So, they could have gone and gotten painters from Modern Americas too...

Still... I'll probably be making a mod for this... It's truly something I want...

----

And yeah, Europe and USA truly won the cultural game here hehe.

Inhalaattori said:

Anglo-Saxon world is maybe over represented. There are many unknown (at least to me) American and English artists, musicians/composers and writers. When I think of great musicians, writers or painters I dont really think Americans or English. French, Germans and Russians have much higher amount of great people in these fields IMO.

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^this. Especially in the music and painting fields. The massive amount of french paintings in american museums shows how under represented americans are in that field.

Actually, let me go back slightly on my earlier post. Looking at the Artists specifically the results aren't great: 16% English and American but another 62% Western European, with only 20% other (Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Persian).

So overall, the picture looks like this (with some rather subjective grouping):
Anglosphere 50 23%
Western Europe 93 43%
Eastern Europe 11 5%
East Asia 26 12%
South Asia 8 4%
South East Asia 2 .9%
Latin America 11 5%
Middle East 10 5%
Native American 2 .9%
Australian Aboriginal 1 .5%
Sub-Saharan Africa 1 .5%

So roughly just over a quarter originate from outside the US and Europe.

Inhalaattori said:

Anglo-Saxon world is maybe over represented. There are many unknown (at least to me) American and English artists, musicians/composers and writers. When I think of great musicians, writers or painters I dont really think Americans or English. French, Germans and Russians have much higher amount of great people in these fields IMO.

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Really? According to the lists there are half as many Anglosphere works than other European, 49% are from Europe not including the UK.
The biggest surprise to me in fact is that there are only English and American works, no Irish, Canadian, Australian etc...

PixelDirigible said:

There's at least Sherman Alexie, though he's very modern. He was required reading back when I was in high school, but I think that's sort of a Southwestern US thing.

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Ok but that was my point - a modern "Native American" artist is really an American artist - at least to most of the rest of the world (so would be seen to reinforce the West-centric and America-centric bias).

Only big problem I see in this game as a whole is the under representation of Sub-Saharan Africa. Not enough Civilizations for starters.

African art and music in fact are starting to gain more popularity at least in Europe. There might although be problem, because these African artists are quite new and they cant be used in game because of that. I think they did decent job though, because they cant use modern artists, musicians etc. for copyright reasons. They tried their best to have diversity, but its not that easy you know.

Jesus... You ppl are complaining as Poles I really feel like home here

No offence, but I really prefer one more american writer, or french painter in a game, than some anonymous tribal craftsman.
I know. It's because of my euro/wester oriented education

Are there any Polish Great Works by the way? I am trying to find the thread with all of them listed but can't find them. I hope there is at least something by Chopin.

Martinus said:

Are there any Polish Great Works by the way? I am trying to find the thread with all of them listed but can't find them. I hope there is at least something by Chopin.

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Only the one: Frederic Chopin - Raindrops.

My problem was mostly with American and English over representation. I know more great Russian writers and composers than American and English combined. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky... I personally dont value Shakespeare, but yeah you have one.

I feel America and England are more about entertainment. If we look the time before 20th century these countries were pretty much meaningless when it comes to culture and art.

Inhalaattori said:

My problem was mostly with American and English over representation. I know more great Russian writers and composers than American and English combined. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky... I personally dont value Shakespeare, but yeah you have one.

I feel America and England are more about entertainment. If we look the time before 20th century these countries were pretty much meaningless when it comes to culture and art.

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That's a rather silly statement. Now, America did not exist before the end of the 18th century, so obviously there is no American art older than that, but English pre-20th century literature was booming - George Byron, John Milton, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Kit Marlowe, Charles Dickens, Jonathan Swift, to name the few. In fact, I would say that before the 19th century, Russian art and literature did not exist.

Martinus said:

That's a rather silly statement. Now, America did not exist before the end of the 18th century, so obviously there is no American art older than that, but English pre-20th century literature was booming - George Byron, John Milton, William Blake, Oscar Wilde, Kit Marlowe, Charles Dickens, Jonathan Swift, to name the few. In fact, I would say that before the 19th century, Russian art and literature did not exist.

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Actually, both of you are wrong. Both cultures had lots of great artists in those periods. But one of you is familiar with one side and one of you is familiar with the other and both of you are dismissive of what you don't know.

This is why representing more cultures is a good thing. It makes people more aware of what other nations have achieved and makes them respect those nations more, instead of saying that their culture doesn't exist.

seancolorado said:

Do Inuit natives make games for their children taking into consideration what a couple of preppy Orange County tennis goers desire?

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This would have more relevance if starting game studios wasn't something limited to people with access to resources and if existing game studios weren't pretty much all run by the dominant ethnic groups of the region in which they're being developed.

And to say that a modern Native writer is purely American is to erase a significant part of his heritage, especially considering the sort of writing he does. Especially since you're absolutely prepared to erase all art in the Americas before white people got here.

Oh, and if you think the point of a game is to be fun and that it shouldn't make any effort for inclusiveness or education because it might be at expense of said fun, well... you must be a pretty boring person, to think that learning can't be entertaining. Also, some people might have more fun playing a game in which people like them are represented.

I would love to see some more Sub-Saharan African art in this game. So just to be sure, could any of the people in this thread name an identified artist, writer, or musician from Sub-Saharan Africa, who isn't covered by copyright, and has a work good enough to be considered a "great work"?

Or Native America?

(Let's not talk about Latin America because they actually have quite a bit more representation than either of the other two complained-about regions.)