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.