White, White, White, White, Offensive Asian Cliche

[Evrett]

Why are the leaderheads from a 15yo game (Alpha Centauri) more racially diverse and significantly more detailed? If you are going to carry over the "Asians are drones" stereotype why werent the other racials stereotypes brought over? Why are the only female leaders radical ideologs with no intellectual authority?

[KaiFiebach]

Some leaders from more different ethnic groups indeed would be nice (africans, arabians, indians etc.) If there should be a Pandora expansion, I hope it will have some colored (and perhaps some older) leaders.

[jdmillard]

Please just let it go. You've already mentioned this MANY times. Yes, we know you're offended. The developers aren't going to drop everything they are doing (which is focused on new game features) to change a little detail that only offends people who are looking to be offended.

Remember that these factions are making fun of white people. Yes,
-the warlike evil Americans who just want to nuke everyone
-the psycho religious nuts who have no rational thought
-the greedy white male who only cares about his profit margins

I expect that if there was someone of darker skin in the game, you'd expect him to have absolutely no character flaws right? or you'll take offense to it. This assumption isn't too far off because you already did take offense to the Asian cliche.

Do I think that some diversity would add to the game? Yes. But I don't freak out about these details because I don't take it all so seriously like you clearly do. Relax and just play the game for what it is. We know the developers are planning an expansion, so the best we can do is to humbly make suggestions. Just remember that all of the factions are a bit radical, so don't freak out when they add a Latino, Native American, or Middle Eastern guy who has some huge character flaw.

[Evrett]

Its not just the racial choices. Its the quality of the pictures. Ac's leaders are far more detailed and inviting and they are a decade out of date. These leaders dont say" play me I'm interesting person and I'll take you on a journey".

[IjonTihy]

Check out my modifications - You can play original Alpha Centauri factions
Also new terrain modifiers.
Enjoy!

[jdmillard]

I just saw those. That's pretty dang sweet.

[Soheil]

Some leaders from more different ethnic groups indeed would be nice (africans, arabians, indians etc.) If there should be a Pandora expansion, I hope it will have some colored (and perhaps some older) leaders.

Well we do have a eastern-asian and heid is actually supposed to be middle eastern, i am from iran and i based his skin color and hair off my own. And we did have another faction with a leader based on nelson mandela, i even finished modeling the faction leader but they didnt make the cut due to a lot of different reasons. The current lineup just looks like this because certain things happened during development that led to this, it was not done on purpose. I even made the news reporter "african" in an attempt to make up for some of the lost diversity to the cast.

When it comes to the aesthetics some of it is subjective and you have every right to your opinion, am i 100% satisfied with them? No. But i made some decisions early on that ended up narrowing my options when it came to design and the amount of detail each character could have. This is a early version of the model i made that i was going to base heid on for instance http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/ ... soheil.jpg. But i dont want you guy to think im making excuses either, i did my best under the circumstances and i stand by every design decision i made. I really appreciate your feedback though and ill do my best to follow your advice moving forward. cant thank you guys enough for your support and i cant tell you how cool it is to see you modding the game and talking about your experiences, keep it coming, it makes for some really interesting reading material!

[jdmillard]

Some leaders from more different ethnic groups indeed would be nice (africans, arabians, indians etc.) If there should be a Pandora expansion, I hope it will have some colored (and perhaps some older) leaders.

Well we do have a eastern-asian and heid is actually supposed to be middle eastern, i am from iran and i based his skin color and hair off my own. And we did have another faction with a leader based on nelson mandela, i even finished modeling the faction leader but they didnt make the cut due to a lot of different reasons. The current lineup just looks like this because certain things happened during development that led to this, it was not done on purpose. I even made the news reporter "african" in an attempt to make up for some of the lost diversity to the cast.

When it comes to the aesthetics some of it is subjective and you have every right to your opinion, am i 100% satisfied with them? No. But i made some decisions early on that ended up narrowing my options when it came to design and the amount of detail each character could have. This is a early version of the model i made that i was going to base heid on for instance http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/ ... soheil.jpg. But i dont want you guy to think im making excuses either, i did my best under the circumstances and i stand by every design decision i made. I really appreciate your feedback though and ill do my best to follow your advice moving forward. cant thank you guys enough for your support and i cant tell you how cool it is to see you modding the game and talking about your experiences, keep it coming, it makes for some really interesting reading material!

That image is cool. It's clear you do some great work.

[Evrett]

Who ever though this level of complexity in the leaderheads was what the customers wanted or though was important - fire them. Is this feature creep or was the art budget just crazy huge?

[jdmillard]

Who ever though this level of complexity in the leaderheads was what the customers wanted or though was important - fire them. Is this feature creep or was the art budget just crazy huge?

The graphics were contracted out. I don't know the details of what went down; for all we know, that leader head was a sample used to get the contract. Perhaps the contractor simply wanted to show his skill and that he is passionate about the project and capable of meeting the expectations. Even if the client has no intention of using all that detail, the contractor would want to show that he goes above and beyond so that they'll contract him for the next game because they'll know his skills... at least that's what I would do in that situation.

[Soheil]

Who ever though this level of complexity in the leaderheads was what the customers wanted or though was important - fire them. Is this feature creep or was the art budget just crazy huge?

The graphics were contracted out. I don't know the details of what went down; for all we know, that leader head was a sample used to get the contract. Perhaps the contractor simply wanted to show his skill and that he is passionate about the project and capable of meeting the expectations. Even if the client has no intention of using all that detail, the contractor would want to show that he goes above and beyond so that they'll contract him for the next game because they'll know his skills... at least that's what I would do in that situation.

well your partially right, i am however a regular member of the dev team at proxy studios and ive done the graphics to both our games, conquest and pandora but ya you got my motivations down to a tee, couldnt have written it better myself man.

And to answer Evrett, well during the course of development a lot of art is created that is never used like concepts and test models and so on. There are many things that you plan on doing during development that end up taking too mutch time and effort away from the rest of the project and have to be scrapped, we tried to add as much of the art that wasnt used in game in the manual but there is still some left over and some too unfinished to show.

[jdmillard]

... we tried to add as much of the art that wasnt used in game in the manual but there is still some left over and some too unfinished to show.

You should make a gallery of all the extra art on the Pandora website. Not the Slitherine page, but this one: Pandora: First Contact. I'd for sure like to see it.

[Soheil]

... we tried to add as much of the art that wasnt used in game in the manual but there is still some left over and some too unfinished to show.

You should make a gallery of all the extra art on the Pandora website. Not the Slitherine page, but this one: Pandora: First Contact. I'd for sure like to see it.

I think at some point we will, but currently we are planning on supporting this game for a long time and bringing you new content so i might still be able to use some of the stuff that didnt make the cut, once i know for sure we wont use any of it i will post it