What culture/ethnicity/racial type do you believe each group is based on? Here are my takes.
Format: Phenotype, cultural influence
Gallente - French
Jin Mei - Chinese, with some Hindu influence
Intaki - Eastern/Central European, with some Hindu/Buddhist influence.
Brutor - West/Central Africans, with Spartan and Melanesian influence
Sebeistor - Rat people? (I don’t know)
Vherokior - SE Asian, with “Gypsie” stereotype
Amarr - Ancient Romans, Roman Catholic/Islamic Caliphate influence
Khanid - Mongols/Central Asia
Ni-Kunni - Arabian/Persian
There’s no real one single influence point for any of the ethnicities, and the ‘playable’ ethnicities are already an abstraction of dozens upon dozens of smaller ethnic groupings in the setting
Also in regard to the Brutor, generally less West African and more polynesian influence if we are going to split hairs a bit
Though, its really hard to claim any particular remaining influences on ethnic groups 26000 years removed from the modern day, one or those things ya know?
It’s impossible to create content (game, book, movie, etc…) without drawing from real-world experiences and influences. So yes, the various races of EVE do represent both the past and current racial stereotypes of Earth. In EVE, the Minmatar were slaves, so I’d say that’s pretty much all the proof you need. The Caldari are Neo-Corporate Hyper-Capitalists. The Amarr are basically space Al-Queda. And the Gallente, well, the Gallente are just there…
I’m familiar with northern India being an influence for the Intaki (although some might say Jainism is more influential than Buddhism), but I’m interested to hear your thoughts on Eastern and Central Europe.
I guess we’re doing the thinly veiled racism thing then….
Considering the format of slavery the amarr empire use, no… no it’s really not as obvious as you make it out to be who the minmatar are inspired from/by. The format, for the record, largely being roman indenture slavery and persian/egyptian slavery with a heavy theocratic slant for justification and additional fuckery to further tailor it to the Amarrian theology.
So, it was just by sheer incident that the ONLY race of black skinned people in EVE were the ones enslaved. Sure. Like I said, all forms of entertainment draw from prior real-world experience, no matter how far ahead in the future the setting is…
You will find the same tropes and stereotypes in every form of media, no matter the setting or time period, whether it’s The Lord of the Rings, or Star Trek…
Except they’re not. And you’re kinda proving point. Any of the races from any of the empires can have significantly melanated skin, and many minmatar, even Brutor, don’t universally as a rule have dark skin. And to prove that I could go to the character creator and make dark skinned examples of every race, but you could also just do that as well, so. Meh.
You can’t be that daft. Fire up a new account and toon, go to the faction selection screen. Which one is the ONLY one that automatically has black toons on the screen? For every other faction you have to go into the character creation screen and make them dark skinned…
Long story short, yes, EVE’s lore, races, and factions are all based on real-world ideologies. The Caldari (capitalist corporations) are aligned with the Amarr (religious zealots). The Gallente (enlightened socialists) are aligned with the Minmatar (slaves or former slaves). Kind of on-the-nose don’t you think? Or do you think it’s still all just a coincidence?
If you’d paid attention, the alignments shifted. Currently the Gallente and Amarr have a Non-Intervention Treaty, and the Minmatar and Caldari have a formalized peace and mutual military aid agreement
And no the Caldari aren’t capitalist, at least not in the way we tend to view it. They have a State controlled command economy under a corporatist slant . The Gallente are the hypercapitalists of the setting and despite the veneer of ‘enlightened socialist’ they really aren’t that in aggregate.
Hell even the Amarr aren’t the hyperzealots that the memes make them out to be
And the minmatar are currently an autocratic ethnostate propped up by a military junta, gerentocratic ‘tribal council’, and led by a strongman head of state
So, when I run storyline missions for Caldari, I shouldn’t lose standing against Minmatar. And when I run storyline missions for Amarr, I shouldn’t lose standing against Gallente. I guess someone should tell that to CCP…
I make all my characters with darker skin, but that doesn’t mean my characters conform to cannon. For instance, under traits it listed Sebeistor explicitly as having pale skin. You have never seen CCP depict any of the Caldari, Gallente or Amarr with dark skin. Ever. Just giving someone darker skin doesn’t automatically make them look black. None of the Amarr races make a convincing black person. That being said, Deteis males can be made great looking black men. Civire females actually look better imo if made to look black than default (they look weird default to me). Gallente men also can be made into nice looking black men. Jin-Mei females can pretty much be made into any race. I would be nice if after 20+ years we could get wooly hair options. But no dice. CCP does not seem to have much concern for black people. In fact, they made Brutor the least intelligent in the entire game back when they had racial stats. Describing them as scary to meet in the flesh and Amarr remarking how they were obviously the best fit for manual labor. Despite the Sebeistor being in charge, the Brutor were always the posterchild of the “enslave faction”. They were the only race whose heritage options directly tied to being slaves and doing all the backbreaking manual labor. Speaking of the Sebesitor, they even made a white master race to be the inventors because god forbid the black race be responsible for anything intellectual. If there was any racism it was from CCP, not players like QuakeGod pointing out stereotypes. You see this is other IPs too. The minute Sony got ahold of Everquest they “de-blackified” the Erudites in EQ2. Can’t have a black mage race having the highest intelligence. Didn’t even realize at the time how progressive Verant Interactive was.
You don’t. I don’t get any standing change with Caldari if I gain Minmatar standing. I can’t speak for the Gallente/Amarr as I haven’t played any recently. But the problem is we still get republic missions with the Caldari as enemies and vise versa. And of course you can lose Caldari/Minmatar standing doing those particular missions. Some of those Caldari missions are just copy-pasted Amarr missions that don’t even make sense for the State. Why are Caldari busting up the underground railroad and trying to help catch slaves? Slavery is illegal in the State. Even referencing how I’m not loyal to the Empress if I reject said mission.