WWWest-Online Development Blog

Since the Old West wasn’t rife with dwarves and goblins, and you’d have to look real hard to find an elf or ogre (actually, you’d have to drink real hard, but you get the point), playable races in this game will have to be slightly different than what you’ll find in an average game. Now that I think about it, most “modern” games I’ve played had no such thing as race. Fantasy themed games always had some of the classic races, sometimes with another one or two thrown in the mix (Tauren, anyone?), and sometimes games with a more futuristic settings will have races of their own; EvE Online had the Minmatars, Gallente, Amaar and Caldari (I think..), and the Dune games had featured the “nations” of that universe (If you’re like me, you’re now hearing the intro to Dune II playing in your head… “…and the insidious Ordos” – and yes, I know the Ordos aren’t canon material, but that’s what stuck in my head ).

But anyway, I digress (shocking). Moder-themed games will sometimes feature different origins or nationalities, but these will usually have no effect on the characters themselves, but rather influence the equipment used by the various sides. An example from a game, albeit not an MMO (or even an RPG), is the old school RTS game Red Alert, in which the Soviet were characterized by heavy yet low-tech equipment while the Allied Forces had weaker vehicles but more hi-tech gear.

If I had to take a guess, I’d say the reason for the lack of “races” in modern-themed games may very well be a simple one: Nobody wants people to point at their game and call “Racist!”, and having different “races” from our times obviously brings up that risk – a problem that fantasy- or future-themed games do not, as I don’t see much of a chance of a Orc coming banging on my door, waving a slander lawsuit in my face. Obviously, having different races with different pros and cons can add a bit more depth and flexibility to the game, but it also runs a certain risk.

So that’s question number 1. Should we have different races? And if we do, how can we make it politically correct enough (or humorous enough, or any other solution) that no one will be offended while still making the races different enough that there will actually be a point to choosing a race.

Assuming the answer to the previous question is “Yes, we should have different races”, then the obvious follow up is what races to have, followed closely by what will characterize each race. We can obviously start with the more obvious choices: Native Americans (AKA Indians), Mexicans, African-Americans and Yankees. We could even take our cue from good old Sid Meier and take it one step further, differentiating between the various origins. Maybe have a difference between Americans who came from France, Germany, The Netherlands, England, etc. Or we could take the middle ground: just make a difference between Northern and Southern Americans (as in, those who would later join the Union and the Confederacy, respectively). Since I’m not exactly an expert on American history and the Old West (yet ), I’m not entirely sure that this has any grounds in reality. I’m pretty sure that the Old West era started right after the Civil War ended (and if that’s true than we can still distinguish between North and South), but not quite…

Next time (or one of the next times, anyway) I’ll try and pop out some ideas for the differences between races.

Kraz