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本帖最后由 傻子大 于 2014-2-19 16:54 编辑
原文转自Polygon.com
http://www.polygon.com/features/ ... ting-game-diversity
其实文中所提到的问题很早之前LZ就意识到了——全球规模不大的街霸圈子里，能叫得出名号、和日本人平起平坐的白人真的是屈指可数；以美帝为例，但凡你能不假思索就能叫出名的顶尖街霸选手基本上都是香蕉人、黑人、拉丁人。而同为电子竞技但以鼠标键盘为操作手段的即时战略游戏圈子中，却恰恰出现了和格斗游戏圈子截然相反的现像。
Open to Everyone · 来者不拒
Tom Cannon is a StarCraft player. He is also black. And in the hypercompetitive eSports scene, those two things just don't go well together.
Tom Cannon 是一名《星际争霸2》玩家，一名黑人《星际争霸2》玩家。在顶级选手圈子里，《星际争霸2》和“黑人”之间似乎没什么必然联系。
Getting into competitive gaming isn't easy for anyone. Most professional gamers play their game of choice as a full-time job and put an incredible number of hours into mastering their craft. In many cases, the types of games they play — StarCraft 2, League of Legends, etc. — aren't even easy to begin. They have steep learning curves, with huge bodies of required knowledge and existing players that have been learning and improving for years.
想入电竞的圈子对于任何人来说都不易。绝大多数职业玩家以游戏为生，夜以继日地操练个人游戏水平，时间累计惊人。而他们所钻研的项目无非是《星际争霸2》、《英雄联盟》——都是些入门门槛非常高的游戏。职业选手依靠惊人的知识积累以及选手间不断的技艺切磋来提高姿势水平。
For Cannon, there was one more barrier to entry.
但对于Cannon来说，还比别人多出一个难题去面对。
"When you look at the crowd ... it's literally like ... find the black person. It's all Korean people from Korea, or Asian-Americans, or Caucasians — almost 100%," says Cannon. "And it's a little bit intimidating to think OK, I'm going to go in here, and like, be a part of this thing, when there's nobody who looks like me in this scene."
“你放眼望去观众席，底下的人无一不对台上仅有的一个黑人另眼相看。这个圈子里，台上站着的要么是一水儿的棒子，要么就是香蕉人或白人，”Cannon说道，“我不得不安慰自己要以平常心待之，假装无视台底下异样的目光，哪怕心里知道台底下的观众可不这么想。”
A look through the rosters of North America's professional StarCraft teams confirms Cannon's story. He usually is the only black person in the room at the tournaments.
而客观事实也确实是这样。纵观整个北美《星际争霸2》的电竞圈儿，Cannon确实是舞台上仅有的黑人选手。
This lack of diversity is not uncommon in eSports. In North America, the League of Legends professional scene is completely dominated by Asian-Americans and Caucasians, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a black or Latino face in the ranks of the teams present at League of Legends' North American Regionals.
这种情况在普遍的电子竞技圈儿内并不罕见。以北美为例，但凡玩《英雄联盟》的职业选手不是香蕉人就是白人，而从中想找出技艺超群的黑人选手或拉丁选手简直如大海捞针。
Clearly, eSports in general has a diversity problem, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what the cause of it is. One answer might be found by looking at a very different kind of competitive gaming — one that, seemingly against all logic, seems to have cracked the problem of racial diversity.
显而易见，主流的电子竞技圈儿里在人种分布上确实不均，也很难确切地说明何以造成这种现像。但回过头来观察另一种电子竞技——格斗游戏——我们或许能从中找出些许线索。
The fighting game community, or FGC, is a strange entity. These days, it primarily consists of an international network of tournaments, from tiny local competitions with only a dozen or fewer attendees, right up to EVO, an annual Las Vegas event which drew more than 3,500 competitors in 2013. These tournaments take place in a wide variety of locales, from hotel convention halls, to the rare surviving arcades, to the living rooms of community members. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in East Asia, similar events can be found in LAN cafés and huge, multistory game centers.
格斗游戏圈子有其本身的特质，如今它由遍布五湖四海的赛事活动所组成，小至当地只有几十人的社区，大到一年一度参赛人数超过3500名的EVO。比赛场地也非常多样，酒店会议厅、濒临倒闭的街机厅、甚至某个爱好者家里的客厅。在东亚，一个网吧或者多层建筑的街机厅就能举办格斗游戏比赛。
Within the FGC, the atmosphere in many ways is completely at odds with other competitive gaming communities. Some distinctions are unobtrusive; players can actually hear the crowd react to big plays, for example. In other ways, though, the differences have an enormous impact on the way one feels when entering the community for the first time.
格斗游戏赛事和其他电子竞技相比在场地以及氛围方面有非常多明显的不同——比如，选手是完全听得见台底下的观众的。光这一点，对于初涉格斗游戏圈子的新人来说就足够震撼。
Reminiscing about his time spent at EVO, an event that is largely considered the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, professional fighting game player Alex Valle says, "EVO's tournaments are designed for the masses to play, regardless of race, gender, religious beliefs, any of that stuff, because [they're] designed to find who the best players are in the world.
回顾自己往年在EVO的参赛经历，自身选手Alex Valle如此说道：“EVO本身就是为大规模的玩家群设计的，人种、性别、宗教信仰在这里统统不重要，比赛的设计初衷就是为了从人海之中甄别出世界上最优秀的格斗游戏玩家。”
"And that's a really powerful message, in my opinion, because the fighting game community is one of the only communities out there where you're playing next to somebody — right there. There's no booths, there's nobody playing on the other side of the country or whatever. You're playing right next to each other. You get to see, and kind of feel the aura of the person you're playing against. That's really powerful stuff."
“依我看来，这样的设计初衷至关重要。没有别的电子竞技会像格斗游戏那样让两个选手并排而坐，你就这么面对面地和你旁边的人同场竞技，那种氛围所饱含的力量绝不是坐在隔音玻璃墙里所能体会的。”（LZ完全同意！）
Fighting game tournaments will let anyone who wants to play, play. Unlike the league-based structure of most professional gaming tournaments, fighting game competitions are open to all. Everyone gets lumped together in the same pool, too — someone could show up to their very first tournament and get matched against the reigning world champion in their first match of the day.
格斗游戏赛事能让任何想参与进来的爱好者切身参与进来。和那些以俱乐部为基准的电子竞技不同，格斗游戏赛事是全然对外开放的！不管你水平多次，在你人生的第一场海选中，你都是有机会和世界顶尖的职业选手切磋技艺的。
Valle isn't alone in his belief that this face-to-face competition helps draw the community together. Cannon, who happens to be one of the three people who started EVO back in 2002, has similar thoughts.
Alex Valle并不是唯一一个这么认为的人，Cannon，作为当初启动EVO的三人中的一员，有相似的观点。
"The thing that has carried over the most [from arcades to the current FGC], and it was probably the most important thing about the arcade, is that it was face-to-face," Cannon says. "And of course that's carried over, because no one's figured out how to make online fighting games really competitive because of the latency. I mean they're good, they're a lot better than they used to be, but [they're] still not up to the standards where you can really play a serious game at the highest level of competitive play. Not in the same way that you can in StarCraft, or even FPS games.
“并排而坐同场竞技的基调打从当初的街机室就奠定下来了，”Cannon说道，“以前根本没人能做出具有完美在线体验的格斗游戏——因为网络延迟。哪怕今时今日，线下的格斗游戏体验依旧不是在线对战可比的，不像《星际争霸》或者第一人称射击游戏那样有可替代性。”
"So if you want a serious competition, it's still face-to-face, fighting it out. And it's really interesting how that changes the dynamic, because you can't hide behind a keyboard. It's not like the really nasty stuff you see on ... famously I guess on Xbox Live, where, you know, you're a little bit different in whatever way and people will just mock you over chat because they can — people won't do that to your face."
“因此，只要你想体验一次货真价实的格斗游戏竞赛，那你就必须直面你的对手，全力以赴——这跟躲在键盘后面线上对战是截然不同的。线上对战的时候人们可能会嘲笑你、模仿你甚至骂你，因为这么做没有代价；但是一旦现场面基，人们的言行举止肯定会立马规矩起来。”
On top of preventing much of the nastiness one often finds in online gaming communities, and in turn providing a much more welcoming environment for people who may have been marginalized by other areas of society, the real-world, in-person nature of fighting game competition has also allowed a tight-knit community to form.
一方面避免了在线游戏常有的无责任骂街，另一方面又有着比别的电子竞技更开放的氛围，格斗游戏独有的“直面本人”的特性让整个圈子有了良性发展的方向。
"I would say like 80 percent of my friends are from CEO and gaming now," says Alex Jebailey, who runs another large American fighting game tournament called CEO. "I use CEO as my hobby to just bring people together; that's my ultimate goal. If I can make a little money to keep putting on the event, I'm happy, as long as I don't go broke doing it. At the end of the day, I think of all the connections I've helped make. People have gotten jobs because of meeting other people at my event, relationships have formed. It just brings everyone together."
“我敢说我现在的朋友有八成都是通过CEO和其他游戏认识的，”CEO主办人Alex Jebailey说道，“我视举办CEO为乐趣并把人群聚集起来，这是我的终极目标。如果能顺道赚点小钱从而避免破产，我就更高兴了。一天忙活下来，我会回顾一下我都帮谁建立了怎样的人际关系。有的人因为CEO认识了其他人从而获得了工作机会，甚至真爱。一切的一切就是为了让人们在此相会。”
Jebailey is also a regular EVO attendee. "You go to EVO and they have like, over 30 countries represented, and pretty much every state in the U.S., all over the place," he says. "It's everyone's hobby, and they know they can get away and keep doing what they love, and no one's going to judge them when they're among people that do the same thing."
Jebailey同样是EVO的常客。
“你到了EVO现场就会遇见来自超过30个国家、更别提遍布美国所有州的爱好者。这么多有着相同爱好的人为了同样的目标聚集在一起，又暂时免遭生活里周围人对‘玩物丧志’的指指点点，那种感觉你懂的。”
And if all of this makes it sound like the FGC, at its various events, is radically more welcoming and diverse than its eSports cousins, that's because it is. And the roots of the FGC's inclusion come from its beginnings, in the arcade. To figure out how the FGC ended up so different from other competitive gaming communities, it's necessary to look deeper into the history of fighting games, beyond the current state of the FGC tournament circuit. That means taking a look at the place where it all started for fighting games: the arcade.
这就是格斗游戏，和其他的电子竞技如此不同。何以不同？若要深究，那就得从格斗游戏圈子的发源地讲起——街机室。
Legacy of The Arcade · 传承
It used to be easy to find an arcade machine in the average North American city. Arcades were on every university campus, in every shopping mall and strewn along the major streets of most downtown cores. Even if you lived in the suburbs, you could find arcade machines at your local pizza place, bowling alley or ice skating rink.
曾几何时想在北美任一个稍具规模的城市里找间街机厅并非难事，大学校园、大型购物中心、市中心主干道随处可见。哪怕稍微偏僻点的乡镇，披萨店、保龄球馆、滑冰场也能找着几台街机。
For most of the 1990s, a ton of the games you'd find in the average arcade belonged to the same genre: fighting. Whether it was a Mortal Kombat cabinet or a Street Fighter 2 machine, or one of the countless other games inspired by the success of the aforementioned duo, it was almost impossible not to stumble across a fighting game. An entire generation of young adults was raised by the likes of Ken and Ryu. For many of these gamers, arcades were more than a place to enjoy a simple hobby — they were a safe haven, somewhere they could go and do something they loved, without being judged or ridiculed for their passions.
整个90年代，但凡一家街机厅都会有不计其数相同类型的游戏：格斗游戏。不论是情侣机的《真人快打》还是对战机台的《街头霸王2》，乃至其他数不胜数的跟风作品，要说找不到一台机器玩格斗游戏是几乎不可能的。
整整一代人是伴随着白人和红人长大的。对于这代人来说，街机厅不仅仅是施展个人兴趣的地方，更是一个免受周遭白眼、尽情享受游戏的港湾。
Not that it was always the friendliest place, necessarily. In 2011, David Philip Graham (aka UltraDavid), wrote extensively about the old-school arcade scene, and described his experience thusly: "If you lost, you walked away without any acknowledgement from the champion, got back to the end of a huge line, and had long enough to wait until your next game to stew on your loss and really start to hate the guy who beat you. Maybe he was the best player in your arcade or maybe the best player in the country, but you could stand right next to him and talk with him when he was off the machine. Of course, you could only talk if you had respect, and you only got respect if you won."
倒不是说街机厅是个与人为善的场所。2011年，David Graham（也就是UltraDavid）就老式的街机厅写了很多儿时的记忆：
“如果你败下阵来，你丝毫不能从失败中汲取任何经验，只得默默地走回大队的末尾重新排号，一直等啊等，终于轮到你了，心存侥幸这回是不是能打败隔壁那个扑街一雪前耻。隔壁那位可能是这个街机厅里最牛逼的，也可能是这个国家最牛逼的，但你却可以如此近距离地站在他旁边，时不时搭两句茬——前提是你能真的赢他一次让他能正眼瞧你的话。”
Despite this, he noted that conflict was rarely brought on by differences in background, and everyone competed on a level playing field. "It was personal and confrontational and insular, but you'd respect anyone who won regardless of race or sexual orientation," Graham concluded.
没有人会因为同其他人有着不同的社会背景而产生矛盾，所有玩家都是相互平等的。“这是一个以个体为单位相互对抗的活动，不论种族、不论性别，能打赢你的你就该对其敬重。”
Most of the veterans of the FGC have their own stories about their local arcades. "When I went to these places — and not just arcades, but pool halls and any kind of recreational meetup — it was a place to go," says Alex Valle. "These places, especially the arcades, you can be playing a game, and it did not matter, boy or girl, black, white, Asian, Latino, you're playing with another person and that stuff doesn't even matter. You care more about the game than about the person you're playing with — until you see what the other person's capable of.
“只要我去有街机玩的地方，不管是专门的街机厅还是台球吧，只要有街机，我都爱去。”Alex Valle说道，“只要你在这些地方玩游戏，甭管对方男的女的、黑的白的、香蕉的玉米的，你所应该专注的是你眼前的游戏，从而发现你隔壁的对手在游戏造诣上有多大能耐。”
"Back then, there was a lot of discrimination and stereotypes and stuff [in everyday life], but that goes away as soon as you start appreciating each other's skill, or whatever friendships you make off of these games. That's the time I grew up in, going to these arcades, and meeting these crazy, phenomenal, funny, angry, happy people that I have lifelong friendships with today."
“回想当年，逛街机厅免不了要被社会指指点点不务正业，但自从在街机厅遇到志同道合的同好们，这些指指点点也就无关紧要了。在街机厅里，我遇见了令人惊叹的、引人瞩目的、有趣的、愤怒的、快乐的人群，并和他们保持着友谊一直到今天。”
This is a common refrain among people who grew up spending a lot of their time at their local arcades. In seemingly every local community, the atmosphere was one of inclusiveness that was sometimes at odds with the outside world. "I'm Peruvian, from South America, and one of the first arcades I used to play at was a place called Mission Control in ... Westminster, Calif.," Valle says. "Westminster is also known as Little Saigon, the Vietnamese business district. It's the highest-populated Vietnamese community in the United States. Westminster was right next to a city called Santa Ana, which has a really high Latino population, but I lived [and still live] in Westminster.
对于有相同爱好的人来说，其逛街机厅的经历都很相似。但他们所享受的街机文化，却与外面的世界多少有些格格不入。
“我是秘鲁人，来自南美。我常去的第一家街机厅叫Mission Control，坐落在加州的威斯特敏斯特。”Alex Valle继续说道，“威斯特敏斯特也叫小西贡，越南人聚集的地方，是全美越南人口最密集的社区。隔壁是圣安娜，拉丁人聚集的社区，但我还是选择住在威斯特敏斯特。”
Valle's game at Mission Control was Street Fighter 2. His go-to character: Ken. "The community in there, they always called me 'the MexiKen,'" Valle says. "They thought I was Mexican. So for the longest time they kept calling me that, and you know, I thought it was annoying at first. Because back when you're young, you're like 'No man, I'm Peruvian!,' but at that time, I was outnumbered, so I couldn't really do much. Eventually I started using other characters though, and they saw that I was a regular, and then they got to know my name, and everything was cherry from there."
Alex Valle在Mission Control打街霸的时候用的是肯。
“别人当时戏称我为‘墨西肯’，他们以为我是墨西哥人。后来他们就这么叫我叫了好一段时间，我听着很烦。一开始我还去解释‘哥是秘鲁人’，结果也不管用，逼得我不得不换个角色。后来和他们混熟了，他们也知道了我姓甚名谁，我的街机启蒙就是这么开始的。”
The early '90s were a time of high crime and gang activity in Valle's neighborhood in the south of Los Angeles. Walking into an all-Asian neighborhood as a Latino could have been a problem for him. Yet he bridged the racial divide through games. "They opened their doors to me; they found out that I lived nearby, that I was good at the game and all that [race] stuff didn't even matter anymore," he says. "I think that's a really big deal ... it doesn't matter what your background is; if we share the same passion for the game, we're gonna enjoy it together."
90年代上半叶，Alex Valle所住的社区犯罪横行。一个拉丁人在亚洲人聚集的街上走，难保不惹眼。然而Alex还是突破了种族间的隔阂。
“他们对我敞开胸怀，知道了我就住附近，我游戏水平也不赖，所以我来自哪儿就显得无关紧要了。你要明白，这对我来说意义非凡。只要我们对游戏有着同样的喜好和热情，社会背景这些琐碎并不算什么。”
Far from being an exception to the rule, Valle's story reflects that of many of his contemporaries. Jebailey, who was a competitive player for a long time before he started organizing CEO, has a similar story about his earliest memories of his local fighting game scene.
Alex Valle的故事反映了当时同代人相似的经历。另一个Alex，Alex Jebailey，早在操办CEO之前就是个高端的街霸玩家，他向我们讲述了另一个故事：
Jebailey's mother would drop him off at the local ice skating rink, Rock On Ice, every weekend, where he would play Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2 with neighborhood kids of all races. "Race wasn't really ever an issue there," Jebailey says. "Back in the day we had that place, and we had Malibu Grand Prix. That was where I grew up; that was the main arcade I used to play at. I would go all the time; that was my big hobby. I would finish my schoolwork, and then on weekends my parents would just drop me off ... and nobody really cared [about race]. People just wanted to play games.
以前每个周末Jebailey的妈妈都会带他去滑冰场，Rock On Ice。在那里，他和别的不同种族的小盆友们一块儿玩《真人快打》（卧槽？！小盆友随时把持不住啊！）和《街头霸王2》。“谁是什么人种在那会儿根本不叫事儿。我们就在Malibu Grand Prix街机厅一天天玩耍，一天天长大。只要我有空我就肯定去。我早早写完作业，一到周末我父母就把我送到那儿放养。没人操种族的心，人们去街机厅就是玩游戏的。”
The state of California, where both Valle and Jebailey grew up, is far from the only place that fostered this kind of environment. Justin Wong, one of the most dominant fighting game professionals the U.S. has ever produced, grew up in New York City. His experiences closely resemble those of his California colleagues. "I grew up at Chinatown Fair in the '90s," Wong says. I was just born as an arcade kid. ... [Chinatown Fair] is located in Chinatown, and obviously it was affiliated with a lot more Asian people than other ethnicities. But eventually, the arcade actually grew to the point where everyone, doesn't matter what ethnicity you were, just went to the arcade. It was actually a safe place, even though a lot of parents — even my parents — were saying 'Don't go to that place; it's very bad; there's a lot of bad people there.' It was like a family there, even if I didn't know the person's name but I'd seen them at the arcade, we'd just nod our heads and say 'Hey what's up. Enjoy your games today.'"
远在美国另一边的东海岸，也有，或者说仅有，那么一家能提供类似氛围的街机厅。王胖，这个如今横行美国格斗游戏界的明星，成长于纽约。他的儿时经历和两位Alex不尽然相同。
“我整个90年代几乎就是在Chinatown Fair（几年前倒闭的圣地）长大的，我似乎生来就是玩街机的。那里地处唐人街，放眼四望全是亚洲人。不过街机厅是对所有人开放的，不管你是哪个种族哪个民族。我们觉得那地方很安全，可所有家长——当然包括我爸妈——无一不警告我们‘三教九流蛇鼠混杂的地方不要去’。我觉得那里就像一个大家庭，尽管互相根本不知道姓名，但是我们见着了就互相点头示意，‘吃了没，没吃上我家吃去’。”
Characters Like Me · 吾似他 他亦吾
There are a lot of factors that led to the arcade scene's diversity. Foremost among them: Fighting games were cheap when they first arrived in arcades, and in most places, they remained cheap for as long as the arcades existed. The barrier to entry was a mere 25 cents. In practice, this lower barrier of entry has opened the community up to people a lot farther down the socioeconomic ladder than the average StarCraft or League of Legends player, and that means a lot more members of marginalized minorities can get their foot in the door.
街机室里人种多样化的因素有很多。很关键的一点是，格斗游戏对所有人来说入门成本都特别低，而且一直以来几乎就没涨过——一个菜鸟和一个格斗游戏之间只隔着两毛五的距离。相比较玩《星际争霸》和《英雄联盟》所需要的硬件成本，两毛五的入门成本让格斗游戏的圈子可谓对所有人开放，于是乎哪怕经济条件窘迫的少数族裔也不会因囊中羞涩而不敢踏入街机厅半步。
As fighting game player and game writer Pat Miller puts it, "You have this huge mix of people, this huge range of people, and I think that's because, you know, you didn't need to own a two or three thousand dollar computer to play games. You didn't even have to have a TV and a console. You could just play with a quarter when you were walking around town. ... When you have that space where anyone can go ahead and drop by, play a game, shoot the shit, whatever — and you actually have an incentive to go out to different places and start playing new people who you're not used to playing against — that really kind of did attract a diverse audience." Miller, who is part Filipino, also has another idea about diversity in fighting games that hits much closer to home for him. "Honestly, one of [the reasons for diversity in the FGC] I think is the representation of people of color in the games themselves," Miller says. "We'll joke about how crazy essentialist and stereotypical a lot of the characters are, but at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure there weren't that many Indian characters until Dhalsim, or Russian characters until Zangief, or Brazilian characters until Blanka. ... The first Filipino character [I ever saw] in a game was Talim from Soulcalibur 2. I was really stoked to see that ... I like having those points of identification; [that's] probably one of the things that made it much easier to bring people into the community. They see that and they think, 'These are all really fascinating characters. I kind of like this guy. I kind of identify with this guy. I'm gonna go play as him.'"
格斗游戏选手及游戏作家Pat Miller对此的看法是：“之所以这个圈子人种多样化，是因为你不需要配一台两三千刀的电脑，甚至也不需要电视或游戏机，你兜里有个两毛五的硬币就足够了。试想有这么一个人人皆可去的地方，想去就去，去了就能玩儿，而且你也有去的欲望，去跟你从不认识的人互相切磋——这样的环境与条件确实能吸引不同的人**在一起。” （LZ：随着街机厅的消亡、免费游戏的普及，入门成本如今却掉了个个儿——电脑、网络人皆有之，下好了倒塔、有键盘鼠标就能玩；而要体验格斗游戏，没有一台600+软妹币的三和原装摇杆不高兴，键盘手柄皆不如意。成本的陡增让如今的格斗游戏想吸引几乎没有收入的年轻血液难上加难。） 除了入门成本的原因，有菲律宾血统的Miller对于人种多样化的成因还有着自己独到的观点。 “我认为格斗游戏里能找到和自己同样肤色的角色也是人种参与众多的因素之一。很多角色确实会因为游戏制作者见识的狭隘和浅薄而被设计得过于刻板偏见，但是，我敢说在达尔西姆之前，你在游戏里难以找出个印度人；在桑吉尔夫之前、布兰卡之前你也难以说出哪些游戏里有俄罗斯人和巴西人。一直到《灵魂能力2》的塔里木之前，我都没见过哪个游戏有个菲律宾人——第一次看到他我确实诧异。身份的认同与共鸣确实让格斗游戏圈子更容易吸引新人。那些初涉格斗游戏的新手看到游戏里形色各异的角色一定会想‘这些角色确实吸引人，我喜欢他，我认同他，我干脆就用他吧’。”
Miller has encountered other players who personally identify with the race of the character they play as, too. Years ago at an EVO tournament, he got paired against a Mexican opponent in the first round. His adversary was playing as El Fuerte, the Mexican luchador character from Street Fighter 4. This inclusiveness within the games themselves sets fighting games at odds with the majority of popular eSports games. First-person shooters are almost always filled with identical Caucasian soldier types, and RTSs and MOBAs generally sport a variety of aliens and/or monsters, with a few hypersexualized white girls thrown in for good measure. League of Legends, arguably the most popular competitive game in the world right now with a roster of 116 playable characters, didn't have a single black character until the introduction of Lucian a few months ago. He was character number 115 — and his alternate costume makes him look white.
Miller不是唯一有这种想法的人。多年前的一次EVO，他在海选中遇到的第一个对手是一个墨西哥人，而他的角色就是艾尔·福尔特——《街头霸王4》里的一个墨西哥大厨。 这种格斗游戏独有的特性让格斗游戏本身又和主流的电子竞技有了更多的差异。第一人称射击游戏里面几乎清一色的白人士兵，而即时战略和塔防类游戏又是数之不尽的外星生物和怪物角色，配些许风骚露骨的白人妹子做点缀。 《英雄联盟》——或许是目前全世界最受欢迎的竞技游戏——有超过116个可操作角色，却在圣枪游侠出现之前连一个黑人都没有！而圣枪游侠是这个游戏第115个角色，更可笑的是他的第二套服装让他看起来像个白人。
The Dark Side · 月有阴晴圆缺
Of course, there's still room for improvement in the fighting game community. Even while doing impressive things in the realm of racial diversity, the FGC shares a burden with the rest of eSports when it comes to another diversity-related issue, one that plagues all of gaming. If you attend any sizable fighting game tournament, you'll notice two things about the crowd almost immediately. The first is the presence of virtually every race under the sun. The second is the almost complete lack of women. The unfortunate result of this gender imbalance is a negative feedback loop; because there's not very many women in the FGC already, it's not easy for women to enter the FGC. In many ways, it's the same problem Cannon faced in the StarCraft community.
当然，万事皆难圆满，格斗游戏圈子如是。虽然在人种分布上格斗游戏圈子令人印像不错，但在另一个“多样性”的问题上和其他电子竞技有着同样的不足。 但凡你身处一个格斗游戏赛事，不论大小，瞟一眼人群你就立马认识到两个现像：一，啥肤色的都有；二，《妹子去哪儿》？这种性别上的不平衡让这个圈子也没少受非议。原因也无非是格斗游戏对于妹子来说太难入门了。而文章开头的黑人选手Cannon表示星际圈儿里亦是如此。
To make matters worse, the FGC has also had a bit of a rocky history with gender politics. Perhaps most prominent among the FGC's run-ins with gender issues is an incident that took place in early 2012. Capcom was in the middle of running a Twitch-streamed fighting game reality show called Cross Assault as part of its promotion for the upcoming release of Street Fighter X Tekken. During the show's fifth day of competition, Twitch community manager Jared Rea broached the subject of the often coarse language used during fighting game competition, and questioned whether such unwelcoming vernacular was something that should be part of the FGC. One competitor on the show, Aris Bakhtanians, replied that trash-talking (and particularly sexual harassment) was an integral part of the FGC. "The sexual harassment is part of the culture," Bakhtanians claimed. "If you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community ... it doesn't make sense to have that attitude. These things have been established for years." Bakhtanians' statements, combined with the general language used throughout the matches showcased during the Cross Assault competition, highlighted a problem with the FGC's general attitude toward women. As one would expect, the backlash against this series of events was sizable, and the whole affair led to Capcom apologizing for its role in the proceedings.
格斗游戏圈子里曾经发生的一段小插曲让性别不均的问题更上个台阶。这是一个2012年上半年发生的一次不悦。当时卡婊为了推广《街霸X铁拳》而在TwitchTV上直播了一场名为Cross Assault的活动。到了这场活动的第五天，TwitchTV的社区经理Jared Rea聊着聊着就扯到了格斗游戏圈里常有的粗鄙语言（比如“you the pussy”什么的），并且提问这些粗俗语言在这个圈子里是否必要。于是乎本节目的其（Zhu）中（Yi）一（Yang）位（De）选（Dui）手（You），Aris Bakhtanians，发表了如下带有性歧视意味的观点： “性歧视是格斗游戏文化的一部分，你要是把这个从中摘去了，格斗游戏圈子什么的就无从谈起了。对于性歧视的忧虑本身就杞人忧天，又不是一天两天的事。”
One of only two women who competed on Cross Assault, Miranda "Super Yan" Pakozdi, forfeited her next match in order to leave the show immediately after Bakhtanians' comments were streamed. The incident remains a black mark on the reputation of the FGC, and to some it is still indicative of the community's general attitude toward women.
此言一出，本直播节目仅有的两个妹子中的一个，Miranda Pakozdi，当场愤然离席（撸射活该屌注孤）。这个突如其来的意外让格斗游戏圈子留下了污名，其对女性的影响一直延续到今天。
As UltraDavid mentioned in his editorial, "The fighting game scene is the oldest competitive video gaming community, old enough to have its roots in an American culture that clung strongly to the view that video games were the exclusive domain of young men. Arcades weren't for girls, and they looked like it." Inevitably, this has hampered the ability of women to enter and feel at home within the FGC. As it stands, there are only a handful of women who can be counted as serious competitive players; a generous estimate puts this number at around half a dozen.
如UltraDavid所言：“格斗游戏圈子可谓自有电子游戏以来最悠久的圈子，悠久得能在美国大男人主义里占有一席之地——电子游戏天生就是年轻男性的天下。街机厅压根儿就和女性八字不合，而客观事实也确实如此。” 于是乎，女性在格斗游戏圈子里既技不如人又难以找到归属感。全世界能在格斗游戏圈子里混得有头有脸的女性职业格斗选手屈指可数。
One of the most well-known female fighting game competitors is French Soulcalibur and Street Fighter player Marie-Laure "Kayane" Norindr. She's been playing in fighting game tournaments for over a decade, and is a regular sight on the European tournament circuit. In the aftermath of 2012's Cross Assault debacle, she was interviewed by GameSpot about her experiences as a woman in the FGC. "When I became a young woman around the time I was 16, people stopped criticizing me about my age and began criticizing my gender," says Kayane, who began playing competitively at a very young age. "Because I was in the media a lot during that time, many people said it was because I was a woman rather than the fact that I was good at these games."
为数不多的女选手中的一个，以《灵魂能力》和《街头霸王》而闻名的法籍日裔妹子Marie-Laure Norindr——其名号Kayane更为人熟知——闯荡江湖已余十载，但凡欧洲境内有比赛就有她的倩影。2012年的Cross Assault活动期间，她接受了Gamespot的采访，就女性在格斗游戏圈子的处境谈了自己的观点： “当我16岁初初出落得像个女人的时候，周遭人不再就我的年龄指指点点，转而指向我的性别。别人说我之所以经常暴露在聚光灯之下，不是因为我的游戏技艺多么超群，而仅仅因为我是一个妹子。”
It's easy to see how women can end up attracting this kind of negative attention in a community with such a small group of female players, and the most viable solution seems to be to increase the presence of women at the FGC's largest and most prominent events. Fortunately, as gaming continues to become an increasingly mainstream — and gender-agnostic — activity, it's possible that the FGC (and other eSports communities) will see an increase in their representation of women as well.
在女性群体极其稀有的客观条件下，这样的负面评价之所以会有并不稀奇；而对这种偏见最有效的纠正方法，除了在人数和场次上让女性更多地出现在有影响力的格斗游戏赛事中，也别无他法。所幸，随着游戏直播日益成为主流——播主男女皆有——女性在格斗游戏圈子以及其他电竞圈子里的出镜率会越来越高。
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发表于 2014-2-7 17:22:26
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