174: What if the Player is Black?

[Raurik]

It took me a while to figure out why I felt that the character design for the main character in the new Bionic Commando felt so fresh. Then I realized it was because he wasn't a white, buzz-cut, space suited, ex-marine, bulked out all to hell for a sunday stroll... ALIENS!!??!!
Yeah... I've been tired of this scenario for a while...
But seriously, Bionic Commando is the digital equivalent of the tall dreaded individual from Stargate Atlantis, but still feels new compared to all the D-rated character designs of the past year or so.
The last character I can say that I really got behind, and it was a surprise to me as I never liked the series, was Soma Cruz from Castlevania. His monotones and sadistic expressions in the fan art were amazing. Not to mention he takes all of dracula's powers for himself and crushes the guy that tried to use him.

Before that.... Izuna was funny... HORRIBLE GAME never buy it. Just find the script and try not to die laughing.
I like Neku from "The world ends with you" but the rest of the characters suffer from the same stereotyping that the usual token black character receives.. :/
baggy clothes = tough guy
skinny w/ loose hair = brainiac
skinny w/ spiky hair = main character
etc, etc, etc...
Only reason I can relate with the main character is I am skinny with spiky hair, but that just puts me in the lucky few.

Honestly though, even if the majority of hairstyles in games are "white" hairstyles, they're usually all slightly different versions of buzz cuts and long crew cuts. I am white as a ghost, with all my hair about 2 inches long, BUT it's actually styled. So by the end of the day, I'm a white guy and I STILL can't find a hairstyle that would please me on a character. Maybe they take polls for favorite hairstyles and all the boring standard cut advocates jumped in the booth voting for crewcut on the white side and cornrows on the black.
It's REALLY depressing on the female black hairstyle side. There is NOTHING there.

But look at it this way, at least you have the cornrows and dreads as options. When was the last time you saw an asian hairstyle as an option?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe2pt1JLfIw&feature=related

 

[DrScoobs]

racism sure is a touchy subject. there are few black characters in video games that arent cliches. the cole train is definatly a stereotype as is barret from ff7.
i would say that garcian smith isnt really a stereotypical black character oh and and louis from l4d but louis dosent really have a personality and garcian has very little.

 

[beefpelican]

I'm not sure if it's fair to list only black characters from fighting games in the lineup. After all, one is unlikely to find a pacifist character, or one with a realistic physique, in any fighting game, regardless of color. Also, they don't really tend to be story driven, so it's a bit foolish to expect deep characters.

 

[jboking]

So, this article lead me to thinking about finding a black character that isn't a stereotype. It took me all of four minutes. Eli Vance from Half-life 2 and Zasalamel from Soul Calibur 3 & 4. Of course, if I was looking for a white character that doesn't fit the stereotype it would have taken me all of twenty seconds, so...

 

[Lenriak]

No mention yet for Darci Stern (Urban Chaos)?

I read (somewhere; I'm working from memory) that one of the people who worked on the game thought it failed to sell well because of the premise: playing as a black, female, rookie cop, etc. Maybe the implication is that a white lead is a commercially 'safer' choice when you're trying to innovate in other respects.

I thought Urban Chaos was underrated at the time. I played it again a few months back and I liked it even more, its like a pre-GTA3 GTA-clone and they managed it on the ps1 too.

The character creator for APB does a very good job in creating people of various ethnicities. It even makes the whites of the characters eyes go slightly yellow just like some black people who have really dark skin. And the characters aren't limited to cornrows and afro hairstyles.

 

[PrototypeC]

I'd like to say a thing or two about GTA: San Andreas. Being white as the driven snow myself, I loved the scope of this game. The whole thing is a joke, pure and simple. Anyone looking seriously at any of the characters may have missed the point.

Everyone in the game is a super stereotype. Not just the african-american characters, but the latinos, chinese, japanese, and the white characters. We've got ridiculous gangsters, police, FBI agents, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transsexual, pimps, whores, rednecks, obese people, fast food employees, housewives, etc. etc. This is the joke. Everyone, including CJ, is a selfish jerk. What does CJ say while he's stomping out some old woman on the sidewalk? "I'm a positive-role-model, fool!"

This is what Rockstar Games is famous for. They have an unabashedly cruel view of everybody. And it's hilarious.

 

[Pyre00]

Oh god, not this again.

I believe the Heavy Weapons Guy has a message for you.

 

[ShortCommings]

i dunno... there seems to be a lot of angst regarding the race issue that seems to be based soley around weather someone is black or white, if we are talking about general discrimination agaisnt a culture what about the myriad of games based on the second world war, surely this continued criminilisation of the germans is worse than (shock horror) putting violent black people is beat em ups, or games that require you to crush kill maim etc. equality, seriously, most games, if not the vast vast majority have a white guy as the bad guys/fodder, simply because every time they put a black guy some lone nutcase will cry foul and then people seem to follow suit (not being racist its human nature to adopt others opinions when they seem to know what there talking about) to back up my point, who remembers the L4D2 debical about the black zombies

P.S. i find that a lot of steriotyped black charecters are mostly japanease/asian, who are notoriously un-encumbered with there racism, its not..racist.. its just not.. ermm sensitive to a western ideal of racism. on a personal level i get fed up of every bloody english charecter being a posh fucking tea drinking closet gay. put some scousers in games plzQ

 

[mrx19869]

dont care what skin color my character is.dont care where he is from.. i just wana shoot something.. or drive something.. its about the gameplay for me

 

[gremily]

What's the issue? I don't get it.

 

[mrx19869]

ohh and seriously.. who cares about stereotypes.. last time i checked i can go out and find once person from every race, or ethnicity and they will fit one or another stereotype.. so what is the big deal..

like i always say

there is a difference between crackers and white people, niggers and blacks, spics and Hispanics .

 

[Compatriot Block]

Frankly, I've always thought that the reason most protagonists are white is because they're much more acceptable to mold in the eyes of our society.

Think about it. A game developer can portray a white male with ANY personality. Cruel, average, nice guy, stupid, smart, anything. Is anyone gonna call out a developer if their white character is a jerk? Nope.

Now, imagine that character is a black person. No matter how they try to portray them, I always get the feeling developers are nervous about how some vocal minorities (as in number, not race) will respond. If the character is white, no one cares for the most part.

I'm absolutely not saying it's right in any way, but having a white character seems to be the "safe" choice.

 

[Brad Shepard]

Isn't Barret more than a hotheaded muscular black guy? From what I recall he showed a lot of emotion and care for his family as well, even though he wasn't maybe the most politically correct character he was not the least either.

No, your right, Barrett had more heart them i would say half of the charecters in there, mind you, the charecters that come to mind are A) a robot cat, B) a vampire wanabe, C) a annoying little ninja girl. and D) someone who really fell into the role of "Fan service" if you know what i mean.

 

[MiserableOldGit]

What, as opposed to all those other well rounded, thoughtfully observed demographics you get in computer games? There are exceptions, but for the most part everyone comes out 2D characterwise in gaming land. Take Gears of War for example. You've got that chap Cole Train running round going "WOO I'm a big black steriotype baby Yeah!". This might be offensive if his counterparts didn't comprise of equally pathetic cliched characters. I think it's got less to do with cultural and racial insensitivity and more to do with games developers being, for the most part, completely and utterly shit at character development, or in fact, coming up with anything that isn't a derivative frankensteins monster of the half-dozen hollywood films they all seem to draw inspiration from. Games developers need to read more, or get people with actual talent in to do the creative writing bit.

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

I guess the Demoman is probably the least stereotypical black character I've seen in a video game. He's a patient, thinking type who's main emotional quality is his bitterness from combat. Add on to that loads of personality, and you have a human being, not a token. Hell, his name's even been revealed, which is something one can't say about the rest of TF2's cast. It's really sad when a character from a game with practically no story (I mean, TF2 is heavy on atmosphere, but doesn't really stress it's behind the scenes style story) is the best example of a carefully crafted black character that I can think of.

 

[Zersy]

what about seeing native americans ? or Indians ? or Mongolians ? we never see those race in games.

It would be nice to see a game with a diversity in races with each character having a deep unique personality towards the player making real world stearytypes obselete in the game world.

 

[Davrel]

What if the player is a Nazi?

Not every member of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei was/is a mindless psychopath, deserving of nothing more than a bullet in the head. Many of them were forced to tow the party line on pain of death. Many of them had families and innocent children who had nothing to do with the direction that der Vaterland was taking. Yet we kill them in the millions, in every brutal way imaginable. Same goes for the soldiers of the Wehrmacht - soldiers are soldiers; they follow orders and are rarely told the full story; yet we still find it appropriate to massacre digital versions of them without thought.

The above was, of course, all devil's advocate stuff but the point remains the same: to make a game that adequately represented everyone fairly is impossible. As long as the game isn't overtly racist or sexist then, really, give developers a break.

 

[Mcface]

There a plenty of games where you play as a black guy, I don't care at all. GTA, ArmA 2, True Crimes streets of NY.

The Ranger squad leader in MW2 giving you orders (as a Hispanic mind you)is black. Griggs from MW1, probably the 2nd or 3rd most popular MW character, is black. I think people make this type of thing a huge deal for no reason.

" if Daddy wants an afro, dreads or corn rows. "I vaguely remembered some character on the cover of an RPG making news because he was black. I remembered the tiny-waisted, giant-afroed, impossibly-breasted woman in Gauntlet: Dark Legacy" ..."Where are all the great and powerful black wizards?"

The Paladin from Diablo is black. moving on.

And what is this nonsense? This is not true. Black character creation has the same exact options white characters would have. They can't create 5000 hairstyles, so they make general ones that are popular. Shaved heads, mohawks, bald, long hair, afro, cornrows, are all GENERAL hair cuts that people today have. Once you switch your guy to black you suddenly don't lose all of the other ones and are forced to have a afro or cornrows and you know it. What more would you want than shaved, short, cropped, hair? I don't understand?

"As examples, Aaron cites characters from the action-adventure and fighting genres. The black characters are either non-existent or consistent in their overall attributes. Consider:

* Balrog (Street Fighter) - a Mike Tyson-ish boxer
* Zack (Dead or Alive) - a playboy/millionaire kickboxer
* T.J. Combo (Killer Instinct) - an urban kickboxer
* Jax (Mortal Kombat) - a Special Forces soldier
* Bruce Irvin (Tekken) - a Muay Thai fighter"

WHOA! You mean, that black guys in FIGHTING games are..FIGHTERS? It's a FIGHTING GAME. what would you expect them to be? And how is a SPecial Forces Soldier anything like a Mauy Thai fighter?

 

[DrEmo]

Well, Mass Effect's character creator can make for some normal looking black characters.
I'm white and my Commander Shepperd was black. That's also a game where you can make your own decisions and not have the black commander Shepperd act like a stereotype.

What I did notice was that you can't really make normal looking black people with the Xbox360's avatar maker. You can't make a chubby character either and there's no curly hair. The clothes choices are also limited. They range from Douchey white guy, to hood black guy.

I think black characters aren't very good for some reason. Developers shoe horn them into cliched roles and they feel like an afterthought rather than a real, developed character.
Virtua Fighter 5 is guilty of making cliche'd black characters. Jeffry McWild is a big, hulking black guy who speaks yelling and is all about brute force. Vanessa Lewis is along the same stereotypes. She's a soldiers and her accessories are guns and weapons. Her fighting style is more tactical and thought-out but her past isn't about power, tournaments or money.

Sig from Jak II and Jak III is a good black character. Well, as far as I can remember. Other than the fact that his gun is the "peacemaker" which is a gun that fires off a huge, ultra destructive energy blast. He kinda plays second banana to Jak, but everyone in those games does.

Moby from SSX is cocky and loud. Seeiah from SSX Tricky is the worst offender. A 70's style "foxy", "groovy" girl in bombastic clothing and with a loud attitude.

Those are the ones I can recall off the top of my head.

But if I use this article as the yardstick for measuring black stereotypes in games, I could list every single black character in every game under "Stereotype".

PS:
Vanessa Lewis rocks.