Too Much Western Art

I_qua_I

I_qua_I

Prince
Joined
Nov 15, 2010
Messages
562
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 :)).
 
To be fair how many great works of art from Native Americans can you name. Well, I sure can't name any.
 
It is pretty disappointing how, what, 95%? of the Great Works are either European, American, or East Asian (just China and Japan) and to a lesser extent, Indian...
 
Loopdy Doopdy said:
To be fair how many great works of art from Native Americans can you name. Well, I sure can't name any.
Click to expand...

There's nothing fair about this. I was born and live in the West. My familiarity with the art of the world has been largely confined to Euro-American art due, in part, to the West's unwillingness to find real value in other artistic traditions.

As an aside, I wouldn't have been able to name the Shoeshone a couple weeks ago either but here they are...
 
I_qua_I said:
There's nothing fair about this. I was born and live in the West. My familiarity with the art of the world has been largely confined to Euro-American art due, in part, to the West's unwillingness to find real value in other artistic traditions.

As an aside, I wouldn't have been able to name the Shoeshone a couple weeks ago either but here they are...
Click to expand...

I knew about the Shoshone, but thats because I live where they used to live. But, I'm not saying that they could've done art of other civilizations I just couldn't think of any native american ones. And I find it kind of funny that out of all the euro-centrism in this game you choose to complain about the lack of art. Nothing wrong with that. I just find it interesting.
 
Maybe an Eastern or African country should make a game that is just as good as Civ with the proper amount of art. In fact, if that were the case, I'd be fine with it if the West was underrepresented.

We know best what is familiar to us.
 
Loopdy Doopdy said:
I knew about the Shoshone, but thats because I live where they used to live. But, I'm not saying that they could've done art of other civilizations I just couldn't think of any native american ones. And I find it kind of funny that out of all the euro-centrism in this game you choose to complain about the lack of art. Nothing wrong with that. I just find it interesting.
Click to expand...

I've complained about the western-centric bias of this game in the main forum since joining the forums. I chose the art this time because it's a new feature of BNW.
 
But what is wrong with a Western-centric game that is made in the West? I would expect the East to make more Eastern-centric. You can't please everybody.
 
GreenThings said:
But what is wrong with a Western-centric game that is made in the West? I would expect the East to make more Eastern-centric. You can't please everybody.
Click to expand...

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.
 
It could never honestly be equal unless the game developers had cultured people from around the world on the development team. Imbalance to be fixed? It's a word, an image you click through, and a number for your bonuses. A game mechanic, a machine with a pretty looking painted canvas over it.

Perhaps the lack of some culture's art could spawn curiosity in the individual, causing them to learn about said culture and share it with their friends! Then those friends can tell their friends, and knowing that then maybe, just maybe, we have started to climb out of our hole and begin to see the bigger picture. Or perhaps they think the west is undoubtedly the most sophisticated and relevant society in history, therefore, hardly any others matter. It's a win-win either way.
 
Well, the works of art represented in the game are paintings, music and pieces of literature with identified artists, composers and authors - cultures based on oral tradition simply did not develop or preserve any art of that kind, simply because they lacked the necessary cultural "infrastructure".

So the fact why there are no (pre-colonization-era) Native American paintings or Sub-Saharan Africa music pieces (again, with a recognized composer) in the game is not because Westerners cannot name any, but because there aren't any recorded, period.

As for the balance between Western, Asian and Islamic art, I think it is fairly balanced - in my game as Poland, where I won a cultural victory, I think most of my great works were either Asian or Islamic, with maybe one European.
 
This is kind of just a problem with art history and art education in general. Overemphasis on the Western perspective and not enough exposure to Asian, African, Islamic (and so on) art. Although Civ attempts to bring many cultures into the game, many elements of the game are still under a Western bias. I haven't seen too many of the works in BNW but it seemed like there was decent mix, especially for the literature. Now I'd like to see a complete list of the works in the game...
 
GreenThings said:
It's a word, an image you click through, and a number for your bonuses. A game mechanic, a machine with a pretty looking painted canvas over it.
Click to expand...

Noting as usual that I don't have the game yet...

I think you underestimate the coolness of the great works. They add a touch of humanity that the Civ V has been generally missing and can teach you about things you hadn't known before. Even before playing the game, it has already made me aware of the greatness of Raja Ravi Varma, which I hadn't heard of before.

It is a great platform for delivering a small, unobtrusive, dose of education and showing us the greatness of many cultures of the world. The more Firaxis can find great works from cultures that we are not aware of, the better this feature becomes. Of course, I understand that they can't invest hugely in researching this, since they do have a game to make, but I the more research they do, the more impact this feature would have on me.
 
I do think this is a noble request. And i have to say im very happy to see this thread, not because I necessarily agree but just to see so many care about the matter :) This community is very nice.
As someone sayd it is very hard to please everybody and the fact the game was made by a Western civ has a big role to play. But if you guys speak your voice we might end up with a more multi-cultural game. Keep up the good work guys.
 
Kairu said:
This is kind of just a problem with art history and art education in general. Overemphasis on the Western perspective and not enough exposure to Asian, African, Islamic (and so on) art. Although Civ attempts to bring many cultures into the game, many elements of the game are still under a Western bias. I haven't seen too many of the works in BNW but it seemed like there was decent mix, especially for the literature. Now I'd like to see a complete list of the works in the game...
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. Western education is narrow to start off with, so it doesn't surprise me Civ has a Western bias
 
You could say Firaxis has a Western perspective on art and culture, simply by locking each great work to a great person. As stated before, I'd presume many African and pre-Columbian works were left out simply because we don't know the author to these works.

Yeah, I think it's time we in the West start giving up on the auteur theory.
 
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 :p Face it
Click to expand...

The only solution is that rest of the world declares war. :mischief:

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 4 Beta
 
I_qua_I said:
There's nothing fair about this. I was born and live in the West. My familiarity with the art of the world has been largely confined to Euro-American art due, in part, to the West's unwillingness to find real value in other artistic traditions.

As an aside, I wouldn't have been able to name the Shoeshone a couple weeks ago either but here they are...
Click to expand...

I am fairly sure that if you asked a Native American tribe member, he wouldn't be able to mention many great Native American authors, composers or painters either.
 
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.

I consider Civ to really be making an effort to be international in focus and to be making an effort to be inclusive and progressive, and so I have high expectations for them, and this was a bit disappointing to me too. There are a lot of civilizations I know very little about except through the Civ series of games, and it's lead me down a lot of interesting research rabbit holes learning about them.

The whole "Can you even name _____" seems like a silly argument to me. They obviously have people to research this for them, and they are obviously interested in giving focus to civilizations that are less well known in the West (or at least the USA) that don't exactly get a lot of coverage in stuff like high school World History classes-- I know we hardly covered all the cool African and Mesoamerican peoples that you get in Civ and I thought they did a great job of piquing my interest in those cultures.
 
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