Vidya games is racist.

[fire_of_avalon]

Whoa there, dawgies. Give me a minute to set out the premise.

There are very few characters of color featured in video games, at least in my experience. The most pertinent example for our purposes at these fora, I think, would be Barret who is basically a stereotype of a stereotype. Yeah, he's a good guy, but he's not smart enough or in control enough to be "the hero." His story doesn't get as involved and he doesn't really develop beyond his reasons for adopting whatsername.

The more I pushed myself to consider this the less confident I became that I could identify a character in a video game representing a person of color who didn't pander to some kind of antiquated stereotype. Is this because I'm rather limited in my experiences with gaming, especially modern gaming? Or is this still an issue in this particular subset of the media industry?

So I made everyone in #eoff argue with me about it for a while, and some chatters were able to give a couple of modern examples that kind of opposed overt racism in game - but very few.

Media notoriously excludes people of color when it comes to stories about personal development over the course of time/adventure. Characters that represent people of color tend to be stock characters who provide support to the main character, but little guidance. Quips, but little wisdom. They're filler.

This bothers me a little, especially because in so many of the games I play the storyline is about saving the world for all people, fighting against ruthless and tyrannical evildoers who want to enslave or destroy planets and peoples. But the group that challenges them are all representations of white men and women with white men and women problems. I love her, does she love me? Who am I? Let me rebel against a father figure real quick.

I'm not saying those things don't happen for people of color - I am saying there are other problems people of color face and that those problems and those people aren't adequately represented in vidya games.

But, this is based on my very subjective and admittedly limited experience of playing games, especially modern games.

So I want you to tell me; has this gotten any better? Are people of color still populating parties as the comic relief or are they getting to be the stars? Are they following stereotypical stories or archetypical stories? Do any video games out there hit on systemic racism with characters who realistically face it? (The hand people in FFX do not count - they were all white dudes too.)

No, Madden and any professional sports game doesn't count either. Neither do games in which you can tailor the main character's appearance.

[krissy]

but this was years ago

[Del Murder]

The new Assassin's Creed for Vita stars a black chick.

Also, the black guy was the character I played in Borderlands, but that is a fps so it doesn't really count.

And I assume the Prince of Persia is...Persian? Though in the movie he wasn't for some reason.

[nik0tine]

I think this is probably just a Japanese thing. The Elder Scrolls has had black people who acted like white people since its inception.

[I Took the Red Pill]

I spent like a ton of coins to unlock the black guy in Temple Run. a ton.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I'm pretty sure Dom from Gears of War is Mexican and he's a beast and (SPOILER)goes out like a champ.

[Iceglow]

Going down the route of FF characters there's a later game which featured a prominent black character. Kiros, who by the way was the most intelligent and wise member of Laguna's squad.

Involving other games series; Resident Evil 5 had Josh and of course Sheva. Gears of war had Dom, Jace and of course, the one the only Coletrain baby! I'm currently just skimming over the games on my shelf here. Another major game series with prominent black/ethnic minority characters would be the Mass Effect series, Anderson is a black guy, Udina was indian, Emily Wong is asian descent. It goes on. Heck if I remember a character description of Shepherd early on it was supposedly the reason for his tanned complexion (on default shep) being that he was meant to symbolize a mixture of different cultures, same with Ash in ME1. In ME2 and 3 it seems Shep and Ash got more white. I would mention Assassins Creed 1 here too since it's set in the Holy Land during the crusades...

I think that you're wrong about the inclusion of ethnic minorities in games, sure some games don't include many ethnic minorities for some reason or another, though notably because of the setting. At the same time, some games provide very few white characters (hello Resident Evil 5) but then again look at the setting, everyone screamed racism about RE5 but it was taking place in Nigeria... if all the zombies had been white that'd be more racist than anything else in the game.

[fire_of_avalon]

I think this is probably just a Japanese thing. The Elder Scrolls has had black people who acted like white people since it's inception.

This is really important now -because it's important to distinguish here that the inclusion of a character who is a certain color isn't the same thing as a character representing a person of color. What I'm getting at here is that a lot of games include people of different races - but as stock characters who more often than not perpetuate a stereotype to support the main hero/storyline. Their personalities aren't well developed and more importantly, what little personal conflict they might face doesn't really reflect the same conflict a real person of color faces. So people of color who play video games don't get to identify as deeply or as often with the characters in the stories.

Of course i still want to hear about modern games that are challenging this notion.

[Pete for President]

Nico Bellic (GTA IV) comes to mind. He could be considered a minority by being Eastern European, and he definitely is the main character. It's debatable I guess.

On related note, I'm getting more tired of Russians and Middle-East rebel type characters being stereotyped as the ultimate bad guys all the time.

[Mirage]

BF3's story mode has a middle eastern looking guy as the "main character". His allegiance is pulled into question during his debriefing, even if from the POV of the player, it's pretty obvious that he's innocent. Well, as innocent as a war-worn soldier can be.

FFX, al bhed are treated as tech-taters/gypsies, ronso are treated as brute and unintelligent.


And I guess this is as good a time as any to repeat what I was saying in chat yesterday.

Racial discrimination is a subject that is pretty touchy. I'm going to take a crazy assumption here and say most video game writers are white or asian(living in asia) males. How many of these writers have actually experienced serious racial prejudice towards themselves? How would they know what it feels like or what sort of things go through your mind when subjected to it?

This is very likely a subject that is extremely hard for a white male to actually write realistically about. You've never experienced it, you might not have seen others experience it except in TV shows, and even if you had seen it with your own eyes, you might not have recognized it as racism because you've got that so called "white priviledge" all around you acting as a firewall. Such a person would put his career at a considerable risk by writing a story about something he has no clue about what is like. Do you want a story about a black guy experiencing racism, or do you want a story about how a white person thinks a black person experiences racism?

It's the same thing with how males and females interact with their own and the opposite sex in media. Male writers know how males talk to other males. Male writers know how males speak to females and females speak to males. Male writers are however very unlikely to know how and what females talk to each others when there are no males around, unless he is a peeping tom who sneaks into the girls' locker room on a regular basis.

I think it's unrealistic to expect a white person to write about how it feels to be discriminated against based on his skin color, just as I think it's unreasonable to expect a male writer to know what girls talk about when they go to the restroom in pairs. Of course, now and then you will have writers that think themselves capable of pulling such things off, but I think it is reasonable to assume that there are more writers who do not feel comfortable doing this than there are writers who do.

Is this an ideal situation? Probably not, but I can't think of a way to "fix" it that doesn't involve people of minorities and females to get into those companies and start writing stuff for them themselves.


With this in mind, to answer the original topic of the thread: No, I don't think it is fair to accuse games in general to be racist. If anything, writers avoiding the topic of racial discrimination is more out of respect, insecurity over their own abilities, or a combination of both. A white person writing about racial discrimination would be kind of like a white guy going over to a black person and say "hey dude, i know how it's like to be black". That's not something I would do, at least. Mostly because I would be lying.

And it's getting better, at least in western countries, where there actually is cultural diversity. Japan doesn't have all that much of that.

[I Took the Red Pill]

(maybe not the best pic to use as a counterexample)

[Mirage]

Oh i just remembered something

The world of FF11 bursting at the seams with racism from NPC characters, and the galka race has a history of discrimination and hard manual labor, as well as living in the poor district of the predominantly human city of Bastok.

There's also an elvaan npc that called me a repulsable ball of fur! That is totally racist, only my tail and ears have fur.

[Roogle]

I think this is probably just a Japanese thing. The Elder Scrolls has had black people who acted like white people since it's inception.

It is to the point, sometimes, where it seems like character models are distributed randomly if they are of the human or elven variety.

I believe there is a Redguard child in Whiterun who looks completely fair skinned. I don't think Bethesda cares very much about race or gender, honestly, and it is a refreshing change compared to games where having a darker skinned character is considered a big deal.

[Raistlin]

This trend may have started changing in modern games, but I agree with foa that by and large games don't prominently feature minority characters in main roles. This is far from unique to games, but spans all forms of media. I remember reading an article about this standard for women and minorities in movies which measures the occurrences of, say, two women talking to each other for more than X amount of time on a subject that doesn't involve a man (or two black people on a subject that doesn't involve a white person). Megan or Miriel might know what it's called, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Anyway, the number is shockingly low, even in movies that have a prominent minority character. I doubt it's conscious racism in all cases, but it does display unconscious biases. Black characters in games/movies/whatever tend to be support/comic characters and women characters tend to be eye candy and possibly the love interest. That is their "roles" while the white guy saves the day.

However, I do think it is getting better, and I would not be surprised if it is getting better in video games faster than movies or mainstream TV. Gamers as a group are just as stupid as any other group, but there are younger and generally more socially liberal elements to the group than within the general population. Like foa, though, I have not been playing enough modern games lately to be able to comment specifically.

[Sephex]

This video I saw awhile ago kind of talks about this subject. I thought it was an interesting perspective:

The Escapist : Video Galleries : The Big Picture : Relics