9 Responses to “Diversity in Gaming”

1. Stephen Posted: Apr 16th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

   1 I was going to make a joke about tetris blocks of colour, but then I realized that this is a serious issue and now I have nothing to post… ah well

2. Kevin Bahrt Posted: Apr 16th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

   2 How many characters can you name that aren’t stereotypes anyway?

3. Kevin Bahrt Posted: Apr 16th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

   3 Of course now that I think about it the majority of games with a lot of plot tend to involve real world places or situations. Other wise they can just use a randomizer to generate faces or whatever.

4. Jack T Robyn Posted: Apr 16th, 2008 at 6:08 pm

   4 Thinking about atypical racial roles in popular games, one name that came to the forefront was Raven in Tekken 5. Though, to be honest, Wesley Snipes did it first. Diversity and Political Correctness (OK we’re not going that far, but) are very North American concepts. The Video Game industry still has a solid foot buried in Japan where diversity is notably less progressive. Of course we can hardly use that as an excuse for what is produced over here. On an only partialy related note, I have yet to meet a female, african-american, tabletop Dungeons & Dragons DM. I’m certain the rarity is easily explained with venn diagrams and cross-sections of the likely demographic. Six out of 18,000 at the GDC . . .

5. Richard "Pocky" Kim Posted: Apr 16th, 2008 at 8:32 pm

   5 One of the problems with ‘ethnic diversity’ in games is this - there aren’t that many games (at least, that I know of) being created by professionals who aren’t Asian or Caucasian right now. (I know there ARE, but the ratio is pretty small) Currently, many Asian games have Asian protagonists. But how many have ‘generically white/not-white’ protagonists? A fair number. We can’t necessarily call a character ‘white’ or ‘black’ if they’re not from Earth or someplace related (a colony in space, etc.). Granted, writing often puts them into one ethnicity or another, but that is often because it’s easier to write them that way. While I would love to see more diversity in games, I think if it’s forced, it will only serve to make games that are less fun and more statements that say ‘look, we’re PC and diverse and stuff’.

6. Kindless Posted: Apr 17th, 2008 at 7:22 am

   6 That’s because the Japanese don’t care about races.

7. Wayne Posted: Apr 17th, 2008 at 8:38 am

   7 I would be happy if you could customize the protagonist avatar more. I got the latest copy of Gameinformant and it has a preview of something called Alpha Protocol. But you have a fixed, white male, character that you’re running around. I’m a white hetero male, but as a friend of mine (also a white hetero male) likes to say, if I’m going to spend hours playing a game, I want a good-looking ass in front of me, not some guy. So why won’t game makers let us customize avatars more? Why not black women? Why not green men? That’s the one thing that I really loved about City of Heroes was you had nigh unto infinite customization, I think all games would benefit from it. (Sadly, CoH doesn’t run well under emulation on my Mac, plus my friends stopped playing, so I’m happy with WoW)

8. Kunoichi Posted: Apr 17th, 2008 at 9:23 am

   8 “if I’m going to spend hours playing a game, I want a good-looking ass in front of me” You know, as a hetero woman, I have the same problem. Most male protagonists are meant to appeal to men’s egos, not to a woman’s interests. We never get to look at good-looking asses at all! More seriously, women aren’t a minority, and they are also pretty poorly represented in the gaming industry and in games.

9. Wayne Posted: Apr 18th, 2008 at 8:38 am

   9 @Kunoichi: I thought my wife would enjoy this Alpha Protocol, but when I saw they only had a male avatar, I didn’t bother.