New race option - Turkic or West Asian

[GrindhouseArts]

What it says on the tin. Can the race 'American Indian' be changed to something more neutral? It looks weird to label First Nations or Maori workers as 'American Indian'.

Ideally, I'd also love a new race option 'West Asian'. Seeing that 'Indian' was changed to 'South Asian', and Central Asia is now officially listed in the Eastern European region, it would be nice to have a more specific option for workers from there than 'Other'.

Edited August 29 by GrindhouseArts
changed title to the open request

[EthanTheRenegade]

Seconded. "American Indian" is a really outdated term

[MisterSocko]

Considering they now serve zero purpose as they're not a potential requirement for gimmicks anymore as they were when they were first introduced in TEW, how about removing races entirely?

[GrindhouseArts]

52 minutes ago, MisterSocko said:

Considering they now serve zero purpose as they're not a potential requirement for gimmicks anymore as they were when they were first introduced in TEW, how about removing races entirely?

They are still a requirement for Free Pictures.

[Iceman90]

I agree with this.

[blairtb14]

Not Native American but indigenous in my country, making this change would be inclusive of more than Native Americans as well so I support this idea

[GrindhouseArts]

4 hours ago, EthanTheRenegade said:

Seconded. "American Indian" is a really outdated term

Yeah, to me it reads as 'US-born person with Indian heritage' because that's usually how the format is used these days. Seeing 'Indigenous Australian', for example, would be much clearer than 'American Indian Australian'.

[Chikbot]

I actually do agree with this too. American Indian is not really a term used anymore.

[SkyCrasher]

Maori workers would go in Pacific for the record

[St. Templar]

If you simply changed "American Indian" to "Indigenous", then you could make the case that Maori workers, Hawai'ian workers, or really any of the formerly "Pacific" workers would be "Indigenous".

So, I would say remove one and change the other to Indigenous.

Just my $0.02.

St.T

 

[LordofGustav]

My country has Mapuche, Pehuenches, Yaganes and many others... so yes, we need Indigenous, instead of American Indian, each country has something Indigenous.

[GrindhouseArts]

'Pacific' works for Maori, but I also don't think it would be wrong to have them displayed as 'Indigenous Australian'. Pacific is just as wrong as American Indian for everyone else though. I mean, between these two options, what would I use for Sami workers? Finland is neither in the Pacific nor on the American continent. And I wouldn't refer to any South American natives as 'American Indian' either even if it's technically the right continent.

I would also like some nationalities corrected because I always cringe a little when I have to use them. Uzbekistani should be Uzbek, Kyrgyzstani should be Kyrgyz, Tajikistani should be Tajik, and Kazakhstani should be Kazakh. (Also, 'Dagestani' isn't any more a nationality than 'Siberian' or 'Bavarian'. It's part of Russia and kind of weird that it's in the nationality dropdown when no other republic or state or province is.)

Edited August 22 by GrindhouseArts

[jhd1]

1 hour ago, GrindhouseArts said:

I would also like some nationalities corrected because I always cringe a little when I have to use them. Uzbekistani should be Uzbek, Kyrgyzstani should be Kyrgyz, Tajikistani should be Tajik, and Kazakhstani should be Kazakh. (Also, 'Dagestani' isn't any more a nationality than 'Siberian' or 'Bavarian'. It's part of Russia and kind of weird that it's in the nationality dropdown when no other republic or state or province is.)

The English denonym of someone from Uzbekistan is Uzbekistani. Uzbek is a language and an ethnicity, but it's not their "official" nationality. The same applies to Kazakhstan and Kazakshtani etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonymic_forms_for_countries_and_nations

EDIT: The exception appears to be Kyrgyz, albeit Kyrgyzstani is still a valid denonym.

Also, the patch notes for 1.16 includes the following:

- Changed the Native American race type to Indigenous, by request

[GrindhouseArts]

Oh, that's great!

As for the nationalities, I've never seen or heard anyone refer to themselves with the '-stani' version. Pretty much everyone says 'I'm Kazakh' and so on in English, so it just looks weird to me. The government page of Uzbekistan refers to the president as 'Uzbek by nationality', for example: https://gov.uz/en/pages/president

I'm also getting this from the dictionary:

Uzbek

/ˈʊzbɛk,ˈʌzbɛk/

noun

noun: Uzbek; plural noun: Uzbeks

1. 1.

   a member of a Turkic people living mainly in the republic of Uzbekistan and also in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan.

   • a native or inhabitant of Uzbekistan.
2. 2.

   the Turkic language of Uzbekistan, having some 16 million speakers.

    

Edited August 22 by GrindhouseArts

[jhd1]

I think that definition is why there's some confusion, because it's referring to people who live across more than one nation. The CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/uzbekistan/#people-and-society) uses Uzbekistani, probably for that reason. That said, the UK government's list of nationalities says Uzbek (and Kazakh etc.) and really, if that's what the Uzbekistan government uses then you can't really argue with that. You seem pretty knowledgeable about this area of the world (I'm definitely not) so I consider this a +1 to the suggestion from me.

[GrindhouseArts]

I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but I probably know a bit more than the average westerner. Ultimately, it's nice to see the often forgotten countries to be in the list at all. Just figured it's worth a shot to get the terms changed to what most people and governments use (US government also uses 'Kazahk', for example) since there were changes to the list. I noticed because I was trying to add a company based in Monaco in 2020 with an obscure member of the nobility as owner/money mark, and couldn't because the nationality was missing. It was added in IX, so the list was looked at in some way.

I went to dig a bit more because I was curious. Tajikistan uses 'Tajik' as nationality: https://www.mfa.tj/en/main/view/66/first-deputy-minister-of-foreign-affairs. Kazakhstan doesn't use either on their government page, but the next most official thing I could think of are the Nomad Games - https://worldnomadgames.kz/en where 'Kazakhstani' is used (to refer to the athletes competing for the country, not athletes of Kazakh ethnicity). I don't think either is 'more correct' in that case. But I'd still like 'Turkic' or 'West Asian' as race option.

Edited August 22 by GrindhouseArts

[PFElton]

If they are being renamed to 'Indigenous', perhaps specify they are 'New World Indigenous'. Europeans are indigenous to Europe, Africans to Africa, and so on and so forth.

[GrindhouseArts]

4 hours ago, PFElton said:

If they are being renamed to 'Indigenous', perhaps specify they are 'New World Indigenous'. Europeans are indigenous to Europe, Africans to Africa, and so on and so forth.

I can't think of any situations where it would be used this way though. Maybe in a scientific paper, but certainly not in everyday use. The distinction is made in places that have a native and a non-native population. I doubt anyone would wonder if an Indigenous Canadian might be Gaul or Tutsi.

[LordofGustav]

30 minutes ago, GrindhouseArts said:

I can't think of any situations where it would be used this way though. Maybe in a scientific paper, but certainly not in everyday use. The distinction is made in places that have a native and a non-native population. I doubt anyone would wonder if an Indigenous Canadian might be Gaul or Tutsi.

I agree to that.

[Chikbot]

Glad to see this get implemented in the next update. I pitched a character from one of the Siberian tribes for a database and it was weird putting her as an "Other" 

[GrindhouseArts]

10 hours ago, Chikbot said:

Glad to see this get implemented in the next update. I pitched a character from one of the Siberian tribes for a database and it was weird putting her as an "Other" 

Yeah, I think 'Other' should be for mixed workers, say The Rock. You could say he's Black, you could say he's Pacific, but neither is fully accurate. Or if you want to create masked workers that keep their identity a secret and could be anything, or fantasy characters that aren't even human.

The one major option that's still missing to cover all regions listed in the game world is 'Turkic' or 'West Asian'. I'm not sure which would be better. 'West Asian' would be more in line with the list since 'South Asian' is already there. 'Turkic' would cover more ground since it's not as geographically limited and would not only apply to workers from Eastern Europe, but also Southern Europe, and Southern Mediterranean. Either way, it's a pretty large population that has no good option right now.

[thadian]

When picking what heritage someone has, it's better to use very narrow terms. Therefore I dislike "indigenous", it's very wide. Narrow terms give you specifics, wide terms leave you in a situation where 'I guess anyone could be anything" and the purpose of having terms is lost.

I think "Native American" is a fine term for specifics.

 

[benjirino]

If we're getting specific, "American First Nations" would probably be most appropriate.

Indigenous - whilst generally accepted - could technically also cover anyone who has not expatriated. American First Nations specifically calls to the region the race refers to, and makes it clear it is not the American Nations as is recognised on a soveign erglobal scale today.

Edited August 25 by benjirino

[GrindhouseArts]

Seeing 'American Indian' is getting changed, I changed the title to reflect the open request.

Currently, there is no accurate race option for Turkic/West Asian workers. There's 'Asian' and 'Other', but neither works that well.

Much of Eastern Europe can be handled by giving them Slavic as language, but Russian isn't the lingua franca in every region. And it's a little weird to say they speak only Slavic when it wouldn't even be their first language. With race, it's just a mess. I doubt many people would say a Turkish or Azerbaijani worker looks 'Asian'. So you can either put them in a category that kinda sorta fits a little - and it's a wide field; Turkey alone has a lot of diversity - or you can throw everyone into the 'Other' void. Neither works to assign somewhat accurate pictures or names - in part because the game treats all of Europe as 'white' (except Spain, which generates Hispanic workers) and pretty much never generates 'Other' workers (which I tested with 5 fully upgraded training facilities, 1500+ names for nationalities that would fall under 'Other' - probably - and 1000+ pictures tagged as 'acceptable for Other').

Adding a Turkic race option and setting it as the default for appropriate nationalities would solve the issue and cover all countries listed in the game world. I'll just refer to wikipedia for simplicity; there's a list of 'notable Turkic populations' in the side bar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_peoples (Obviously Russia, Ukraine, Moldova should be primarily white with a smaller percentage of Turkic for generated workers to account for the minority populations, such as Yakuts or Tatars.)

Edited August 29 by GrindhouseArts

[thadian]

As I said with languages - lets have "Edit Race" and just let people add/remove/edit, and do what they want with it. Some people might want to break down every heritage/culture as a "race". Someone might want to add/remove a few they believe should be present ,or even reduce the number of they want. As I said in languages we should not ask for default database space to be used on redundancies that will open a can of everyone saying "add this one, add that one". The best option is "satisfy everyone".