Most video games star white males.

[Redryhno]

Well of course most video game stars are white males. We live in a female-oppressive patriarchy where men are considered more powerful, more interesting, and more deserving of exaltation. Until we fix what is truly wrong with how our society approaches gender, we shouldn't expect any less.

Ahem. No. Drop the female oppression crap, it's gone. That stuff ended twenty years ago. And that's pushing it. Now we just have the after effects of the female oppression. And since fictional characters are not people, and are in fact visual metaphors, a female protagonist carries undertones that a developer may not want their game to be about.

Really? When did they stop paying women less than men for the same work? Did that end today? Because last I checked, it was still the case. Just because things have improved doesn't mean the issue of oppression is over and done with. It's a mistake to simply brush it off as "soooo yesterday."

You sure you don't just want to stop right there? 'cause all you're doing is ringing the same bell that been rung by millions of ignorant sheeple before you. Look at this differently, you're a business owner, and your biggest and bestest person in sales/marketing/etc. finds out she's pregnant, but you've got the largest merger/client/etc. you'll ever have coming in soon, so you've got roughly six months until you lose her for another six to eighteen months, depending on unions, state, drive, and all the wonderful things that go into that time. Now you can't just drop her from this buy or whatever because she's the only one that can run with this to the end with you coming out as far up as you can. But this job is going to take longer than the six months you've got her for, so you have to get someone to cover the job where she takes off and then you get left in the wind. You still have to pay her a certain amount, which is fine, except for that little thing called a budget, and according to federal regulations, you can't drop her from the roster without the risk of being sued for the ownership of your company or whatever, but you still have to let some people go to pay for that one person to get what they're "entitled to", so you drop three guys with kids and tuition and all that to pay for her, because you let the older guys take early retirement a year before to keep those three guys you just let go on at the company.
Basically what I'm saying is you're only seeing half the picture, or a quarter or eighth, besides, if you're above the age of six and live anywhere you can get internet, which you obviously can, the world is GRAY, not black and white as we assume it is up until that point, there's always another angle to look at this kind of stuff.

 

[smythn]

I'm pretty sure i'm not alone when i say this, but the race of the character doesn't really matter in most games; for instance:

-If it's and FPS then the race of the character doesn't particularly matter, bullets kill non-discriminately...

-An RPG see's you playing as whatever race you make your character to be, even cats if that so takes your fancy.

-Racing games have a tenancy to assume that it is just YOU driving the car, unless your playing formula 1 and you really get an insta-boner over being Lewis Hamilton...

The only time you should be bothered about the race of a character in a game (or any other interpretation of media) is when you have a bias against the race you seem to be criticizing.

Which for the most part is construed as Racism.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

There is really no reason to be disturbed by this any more so than white males being prevalent in movies.

I'm am going to go out on a limb and say that a majority of developers are white males. It is always easier to design a character akin to yourself.

In addition, white males are common, so a character that isn't is assumed to be different for a reason other than the devs just wanting it to be that way.

As a continuation of that, pallet swapping a character from white to something else JUST for the sake of saying "Hey look, we're different!" is by no means a good thing.

And finally, as another said, a majority of gamers are white males. Games are meant to put us in a characters position. Many people cannot do that with someone who is not their race. Therefor, it is easier to sell games with white male protagonists.

 

[Lazier Than Thou]

Really? When did they stop paying women less than men for the same work? Did that end today? Because last I checked, it was still the case. Just because things have improved doesn't mean the issue of oppression is over and done with. It's a mistake to simply brush it off as "soooo yesterday."

The wage gap is a myth. It's been disproven time and time again. http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/ba392.pdf

Women are not oppressed.

 

[ms_sunlight]

The wage gap is a myth. It's been disproven time and time again. http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/ba392.pdf

Women are not oppressed.

You do realise that posting a link to a paper by a conservative think-tank pushing their own agenda does not count as Winning The Argument, right?

 

[Lazier Than Thou]

The wage gap is a myth. It's been disproven time and time again. http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/ba392.pdf

Women are not oppressed.

You do realise that posting a link to a paper by a conservative think-tank pushing their own agenda does not count as Winning The Argument, right?

You do realize that posting a rebuttal that doesn't address the argument in question and attacking the source of the information while not in any way showing they're wrong does not count as an argument, right?

 

[ms_sunlight]

You do realize that posting a rebuttal that doesn't address the argument in question and attacking the source of the information while not in any way showing they're wrong does not count as an argument, right?

Never said it did. You're the one cherry-picking citations to support extraordinary claims here. Even a quick web search on the term "gender pay gap" will show that the mainstream view is the gender pay gap is real, and there is a multitude of evidence for its existence. Although there is considerable argument about exactly how it comes to be, and figures vary greatly from country to country, it's real. Authoritative sources such as actual published government statistics, peer-reviewed academic research and reputable news sources (e.g. BBC or The Economist) will show you it's there.

 

[Dogstile]

So, in this thread, we started off with we don't have enough non-white leading characters in games. Sure, that would be fine if it was left there, but the OP is actually trying to pass off that not being attracted to a black person is racism. Protip: Its not, you're attraction depends on so many things that it can't possibly be racism unless you said something along the lines of "i'd fuck her, but she's black so i'd probably catch something" in which case you would be both racist and a massive fucking tool.

Then the OP gets asked about whether its racist that some films have all black cast members while the people producing the film are also all black. OP dodges the question and tries telling us that its irrelevant and that asking the question is us dodging the question, very sneaky.

People, this thread is spiraling into chaos, multiple warnings and bans [edit] abound (i forgot to add that word). I suggest we get to the lifeboats *flies away*

 

[Xenedus]

Whites make up 63% of the population in the USA in 2010...

Most games portray a main character who is some sort of soldier/warrior/ect... A role primarily held by Men for various reasons including upper body strength, and overall mass, and also depending on the society being portrayed it can also be a traditionally male role.

The purpose of a video game that is portraying a character is to make a character who matches the world they inhabit. If the game involves a military character in the United States then it makes perfect sense for a character to be a white Male as their ethnicity makes up over half the population in general and most combat roles are handled by men. It's really just simple probability.

Games that DO portray women do not portray women that adhere to the norm of their society. It portrays women who are gifted in some way to overcome their physical disadvantage be it in the form of an advanced technological suit coupled with badassitude (Samus) or a portal gun (Chell).

Games that portray existing characters have to deal with the fact that many of these existing characters may have been created many years back when minorities occupied even less of a % of the american population.

As for foreign made games that feature white protagonists... (let's use Devil May Cry as an example) The protagonist of a game has to match up with the environment they are living in. So in a game taking place in a gothic horror setting with castles and such it really wouldn't make too much sense to have a japanese protagonist as that's not really their part of the world so they needed a foreign main character and it's really not a surprise that they made that character white. (Asia doesn't have many black people)

 

[TehCookie]

I don't like how you lump different races into "white". Italian or Elvish (or whatever Link is) don't count as different because they have a light skin tone? Also a lot of Japanese games do feature Asian protagonist, but we just want to relate to them so we see them as white. The Japanese who play them see them as Japanese. Honestly I can't see how you can call a character with blue hair a race from reality. I wish I could find that youtube video describing exactly why Asian characters are Asian and not western.

Honestly do you really care about skin color that much? I didn't even notice Dante from DMC1 was tan until I played the 3rd one. (Though you can argue that making him white is somehow racist, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. Changing his skin color didn't change his character.) He's still white in DmC and that's a bigger change in character (and if you want to talk/complain about that make a DmC thread).

 

[Skillswords]

it kinda isn't the only medium, in case no-one else brought it up, movies with bruce willis/sylvester stallone/ anyoneelsefromtheexpendables show the main as a white male seeking revenge in some form for losing something, by killing anything else...

that's why my favorite action movie is Hanna

 

[BlumiereBleck]

By Cuban friends didn't even notice it until I showed them this thread. They still don't see it as a bug deal.

 

[Aprilgold]

So your saying that Asians are white guys? If we are going to judge Asians as Caucasians then Africans will ALSO count as black guys.

A correctly made character it shouldn't matter that their a certain skin color. For example, in a game like NetHack you don't choose a skin color, because it doesn't matter. Your characters in any MMS game or WW2 game you can pretend your black, since they never say your white. Gordon Freeman could be Black because it doesn't really matter hes white.

No, its not racist since there are plenty of other ethnicity characters...... Theres no gay characters, though, or any that are straight up gay, only Bi so far. Just saiyan.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Really? No one posted the- fuck it:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/diversity

 

[Landshark1]

Last time I heard anyone say this, It was on a youtube comment where someone posted "Watchmen is Racist because it doesn't have any black main characters". If the most important thing in a video game to you is the skin color of the main character, you are either playing the wrong type of games, or are in fact a racist yourself.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Last time I heard anyone say this, It was on a youtube comment where someone posted "Watchmen is Racist because it doesn't have any black main characters". If the most important thing in a video game to you is the skin color of the main character, you are either playing the wrong type of games, or are in fact a racist yourself.

Or maybe the person is black.

Hell, I bought GTA: The Lost and Damned just because the main character is Jewish. I honestly cannot name ONE other game that has this.

 

[Crazedc00k]

Why are so many people getting defensive about this. There IS a disparity, and yeah I can see why, but that doesn't mean that its endemic to games. Is it necessarily a bad thing, motivated by racism? Clearly not. That said, the time will come when games are better at approaching a variety of ethnicites, races, and cultures with a steady hand. When that happens, the industry will have benefited.

Quit complaining about someone who this DOES bother. Acting like it isn't a valid point is both morally and factually incorrect.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

This is a bit of a pointless thread! Most of those games listed have pretty standard reasons that they star white males...
Mario and Ezio are Italian...
GoW has a dominant Black main Character as well as a dominant Hispanic main character too, you play as a white guy, but they don't dominate the game!
Link is rarely portrayed to be human... And don't forget race couldn't be portrayed very well in 8bit games! With the black backgrounds that were often used as default, and the lack of shades, characters had to stand out so lighter colours were used.
Answer to the Asian/Western Question - Abridged version: They are actually considered by the Japanese to be Japanese... Its just an accepted culture thing... Its a western perception that they appear white...
Finally, the main question.. It's down to demographics... The average gamer is a white male... Seriously look around at a convention... Which is why nearly all characters are made as white male, for relatability, or hot white girls, for sexual interest, (we've all been there! We have all had the 'who is hotter' argument.) Its not just games, most western media plays to these rules. Movies have mostly white male main characters, and so do Comics...

 

[Dfskelleton]

Fix the lack of character complexity and personality. Then, we can worry about race.
It doesn't matter if I'm playing as a white man or a black man (or a white woman or black woman, for that matter), I'd much rather have a character I can like and relate to in some way.
For example, I don't like York from Deadly Premonition because he's white. I like him because he's a well written, funny, and interesting character.