Vidya games is racist.

[Sylvie]

Japan is creepy and idealistic towards the Western world. It's a whole organism in and of itself.

[Nice]

Tings Mash: Gamer Review: Race in Video Games - Are Video Games Racist

A little something I wrote a whole back on this very subject. Tell me what you guys think.

[Mirage]

Someone brought up the fact that Japanese always have white people in their own games.

Which makes me wander about anime. Most anime actually takes place in Japan, but I seriously don't think there are that many blonde haired, blue eyed women in Japan.

Japanese people actually think anime characters look asian. Not because of their hair color or eye color, because those are highly unnatural all through all sorts of anime. If a blonde character is western because he is blonde, where does a purple haired character with red eyes hail from? Colors don't necessarily play an important role when discerning where a character is from in animes. What makes Japanese people think anime characters look asian is actually the shapes of their faces. Anime faces are generally pretty flat, just like what is common in asians.

[Nice]

Some characters who I find a bit too much on the racial profiling.

FFVI - General Leo
Leo's sprite was white with blond hair, but his character portrait was black. Which was he and why wasn't it consistent?

FFVII - Barrett
What could be said about Barrett that a Google search can't? He looks like Mr.T.

Street Fighter - Balrog
Mike Tyson.

Metal Gear Solid 4 - Drebin
A monkey follows him. A monkey follows him.

Can't think of anything else right now.

[Sylvie]

Barrett is one of the most concerning racial stereotypes I can think of. Every single thing about him can be backed by a very common stereotype of black people in our world. Then you may even take a look at Yoshitaka Amano's drawing of Barrett; it all speaks for itself. Barrett Wallace is a great joke.

[KentaRawr!]

Lol His name is censored. Yoshitaka.

[Madame Adequate]

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.

The Bechdel test. I see how you assume that only a WOMAN would know it

Also yeah the representation of almost anyone in videogames as a whole is pretty horrendous. I can provide counterexamples, some of which have been raised in this thread already (Faith ) but those are exceptions to the rule.

[Pike]

Someone brought up the fact that Japanese always have white people in their own games.

Which makes me wander about anime. Most anime actually takes place in Japan, but I seriously don't think there are that many blonde haired, blue eyed women in Japan.

That's because all the women in Japan have bright blue hair and big shiny purple eyes.

[Vyk]

I like this thread, because I'm trying to think of a game where I played as a person of color who could NOT be confused for a white person, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And aside from Asian characters, I honestly can't think of any. Beyond Good and Evil and Xenogears are good examples of games I've played where the characters are most likely asian. But I don't really think that should count in this argument, as that's like the second most common character type. And even that is ambiguous enough to be relatable to white folk. Plus Japan sort of originated the grand master gaming experiences. So having asian characters is hardly surprising. Indian, mexican, and black charcters are a lot more rare. Interestingly, its a lot easier to relate to an alien, robot, or other life-form (dog [Okami], plant/bug [Botanicula?]) than a black man in a video game for some reason

Interesting personal observation: I hate Grand Theft Auto. Always have. Tried almost all of them, and it never stuck. Yet I had even LESS interest in San Andreas because I would have been forced to play a stereotypical black man I'd have trouble relating to. Of course I made my Saints Row character white. But this argument could be a couple of combined factors. My hate of GTA being prominent already. And the fact that it was a stereotype and not a real character. I don't think my love of Mass Effect would have waned very much had I made Shephard black.. I'm going to have to try this and conduct this test on myself

[Markus. D]

You just need to branch out your gaming selection. It's arguably uncommon, but certainly not rare.

[Mirage]

Give some examples, then

[Vyk]

Agreed. I'd be interested in broadening my horizons and trying GOOD games with out-of-the-ordinary protagonists

[Loony BoB]

While not a heavily mainstream game, The Mark of Kri features an entire cast based on the various Polynesian cultures/races. I haven't played the sequel - Rise of the Kasai - but I imagine it's similar.

[Vyk]

That made me think of Jade Cocoon, which furthers your point. I'm not sure they were specifically designed to portray a certain culture or ethnicity and were just some fantasy tribal type, but its still not "just some white guy".

[GhandiOwnsYou]

This has been bothering me for YEARS now. I see several points that keep popping up over and over. First, there's the lack of racial minorities in lead roles in video games. This is usually quickly rebutted with a list of games. Then the camp of "All the ethnic characters are always stereotypes!" and the camp of "The ethnic characters are always just recolors of a white guy" show up. Sometimes I'm seeing both in the same reply.

No one will ever be satisfied with the racial aspect of video games because of those two statements. To get a completely believable racial character, you have to walk a very, very fine line. That line is in a different place for pretty much EVERY person. Anytime you attempt to include racial topics in a game, you're going to fall into "That's so stereotypical, you guys are racists" or "That guy is acting so white." I don't get it. What does a black guy act like? How does he differ from a white guy? If you drop an african, a russian, a japanese man, a korean, a mexican, a canadian and an american into an alien infested city, is there really going to be a cultural difference in the way they blast their way out of it? I think it's a step FORWARD when you can say that you could change the white character into a black character or vice versa, it shows that we've advanced enough as a society to not need to have a character acting in a stereotypical manner to denote his race.

If you want to see factors like racism, slavery, prejudice, or government injustice played out I think we've got those covered in spades. Everything from Fallout to The Elder Scrolls to Final Fantasy to Grand Theft Auto has played into the topics of racism and injustice over the years. I don't see what we're really missing unless we want an affirmative action simulator or a game where your character loses 5 points of morale when a random old lady on the street hugs her purse closer to her chest.